The Urges

Abstract

The Urges Deborah Allbritain (bio) Stored in mason jars, lining the window ledge.Blue sulks unruly, demands salt or elsea pleading syrup. Ochre whispers Italian,Loneliness is a hole nothing lives in.Carmine, like finger notes poured from the ram.Let’s pretend. You be the happy bear,sugar-coaxed, sipping this sherry pinkedaniline. And sarcoline, the colorof our limbs, calms any grief, ghost-stockingscaught in trees. Flaming a hole in your skull,the double jar, perilous, a deep red falu—unscrewed then askew, your tender-wet futurea low luminescence, a crave like whine,the oldest urge, specifically mine. [End Page 85] Deborah Allbritain deborah allbritain’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Potomac Review, the MacGuffin, Salamander, the Laurel Review, Sugar House Review, the Greensboro Review, and B O D Y Literature. She received the Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize in 2017. * Copyright © 2021 University of North Carolina Wilmington