– Home
– Issues
– Submit
– About

TPC Review Issue 003

Brooke Bianchi-Pennington

Spring Couplets
  for S. — if we ever risk the sting

The swath of skin is swarmed.
Between blue jean and white sneaker,
蚊蟲’s repetitive strokes, dark blots
on paper-thin skin. Then,
a buzz in my pocket. A name 
flickers flame across the pool of glass
in the palm of my hand.

Tomorrow my ankles will itch, 
pinpricks merging, inflamed and pulsing.
Soon, too, this petal-flame name,
floating down, pooling. Base of my brain,
tinged pink then tepid black — organic 變化.  
I tell myself I will do better, ward with 
sprays and socks and self-restraint.

But maybe this is just the price,
the double-stuffed tax for my oversized 
share of this earth. For sharing this earth 
with sunny spring days and soft-spoken sighs.
Pink, exposed flesh, red, beating heart,
春聯, bitten and blooming.