Poem Toward the Corner of Your Mouth

What I rode toward on the backs of donkeys,
on the backs of tortoises, the backs of extinct

armadillos, in my Sabbath sorrow, my loneliness
which was, at that time, all I would agree upon,

& the air that night like the air in a ceremony tent
when the cinnamon has been fed to the starling

& the starling in a cage to the fire, air like that,
sung up, shivering, a winter in the lung, my one

I rode toward the corner of your mouth—soft
& splendid corner, a line plucked from the mind

of an ascended geometrist, on the backs of solemn
animals I rose into your breathing & that thing

you do that thing with your mascara.

JEREMY RADIN

Jeremy Radin is a writer and actor. His poems have appeared in Poem-a-Day, Ploughshares, The Sun, Only Poems, and elsewhere. He is the author of Belly God (Orison, 2026, selected for the Orison Prize by Ellen Bass); Dear Sal (Not a Cult, 2022); and Slow Dance with Sasquatch (Write Bloody, 2012). Instagram: @germyradin.