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LET’S NOT LIVE ON EARTH
Sarah Blake
LET’S NOT LIVE ON EARTH
Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan Poetry
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
© 2018 Sarah Blake
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill
Typeset in Parkinson Electra Pro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8195-7766-5
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8195-7765-8
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-8195-7767-2
5 4 3 2 1
Cover illustration by Nicky Arscott.
If you were lost, I would cry, my son says to me.
If you were lost, I would cry, I say back to him.
CONTENTS
One Doctor Leads to the Next 5
I Thought It Was a Good Idea to Walk to CVS with My Son on a Ninety-Degree Day 8
You Are Connected to Everything 21
Watching TV, Seeing the Shot Woman 48
Easier to Write the Poem Where I’m the Queen 51
My Obsession with Just Is My Obsession with the Temporal 55
LET’S NOT LIVE ON EARTH
SUICIDE PREVENTION
New signs at all the local train stations—
Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
I’m glad my son can’t read yet.
Yesterday morning he made up a friend, Lofty,
who was captured by bad guys.
My husband asked, Loffy?
He said, No, with a T.
If it was a v, it would be Lof-vee.
He’s starting to get it.
If it was a circle, it would be Lof-circle.
He’s almost starting to get it.
Today he tells me he’s dead. He’s a ghost.
He misses his ghost family.
Something’s wrong because they’re inside
the
