• Home
  • Submit to Five South
  • The Weekly
  • Fiction
  • Non-Fiction
  • Submit to Five South

  • Submissions are open for flash, poetry, long fiction, and non-fiction. Read our submission guidelines.
  • Recently Published

    • The Evolution of Eve by Debra A. Daniel
      Who would’ve thought she’d ever dance again?
    • Our Theseus by Nathan Jefferson
      Last week he was a dishwasher who his coworkers called Ricky. Today he’s a day laborer named Eddie, clearing a pair of fallen trees off a new build’s lawn and fixing up a large garden. Rotting plank ripped out, new plank inserted.
    • Robbing the Pillars by Marie Goyette
      Ruth stood on the narrow iron bridge, gripping her father’s obsidian necklace, and wondered how many years it would take before the river wore them both down to nothing.
    • Roll for Love by Cidney Mayes
      She holds the dice up to me. “For good luck?”
    • The Call by Eben E. B. Bein
      I hungered into that quiet until— there—unbelievable!— a wolf spider scuttled onto a leaf.
  • Home
  • SUBMIT
  • About Five South
    • Newsletter
    • Masthead
    • Authors & Poets
  • DONATE
  • THE JOURNAL
    • The Weekly
    • Fiction
    • Non-Fiction
  • Join Us!
    • Volunteer Associate Editor, The Weekly
    • Volunteer Social Media Manager
    • Senior Non-Fiction Editor
    • Deputy Editor
    • Volunteer Readers

Desire Speaks by Alexandra Burack

September 11, 2024
Reading Time: 1 Minutes

I do not think of you with sea-green eyes, backlit

by August sun. I do not think of you with the sticky-

silk of orchid stems against your arm or how you held the dead

bird we found on the beach between two stones. I do not think

of you as instant is chiseled: the flamed shape of your hand

on my shoulder. I do not think of you in the half-

shadow of dusk even though you are viable light against

how things will end. I do not think of you as all

the cavities of the tactile. I do not think of you;

it is tundra here and you could not stand the cold.

 

Free VersePoetry
Share

Poetry  / The Weekly

Burack, Alexandra
Alexandra Burack is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, editor, and author of On the Verge (Plinth Books). Her recent work appeared in The Sewanee Review, Lumina Journal, Sky Island Journal, Emerge Literary Journal, The Blue Mountain Review, and Broad River Review, and is forthcoming in Spillway Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, and A Plate of Pandemic. She serves as a Poetry Reader for The Los Angeles Review and $ Poetry is Currency, a Poetry Editor for Iron Oak Editions, and is Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at Chandler-Gilbert Community College in Arizona.

You might also like

The Call by Eben E. B. Bein
February 25, 2025
Caught by Chris Bullard
November 19, 2024
Second Winter Solstice During an Epidemic by Marianne Worthington
September 26, 2024
  • Poetry

    • The Call by Eben E. B. Bein
      February 25, 2025
    • Caught by Chris Bullard
      November 19, 2024
    • Second Winter Solstice During an Epidemic by Marianne...
      September 26, 2024
    • Beautiful Generative Machine by David Fowler
      September 17, 2024
    • Desire Speaks by Alexandra Burack
      September 11, 2024

  • Subscribe to our Newsletter
    Subscribe Now

    We won't spam you. Unsubscribe whenever.



  • Categories

    • Book Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Non-Fiction
    • Poetry
    • The Weekly
    • Uncategorized

  • DONATE
    VOLUNTEER
    ABOUT FIVE SOUTH
    MASTHEAD
    SUBMISSIONS



© Copyright 2020-2025 Five South :: Web Design by Kristen Simental