say this is true or that is true
or maybe it’s try and air warm socks on a cold floor
a mess a confession awkwardness and supplication
to know it you have to believe
you can know anything a name a place
the what if what for grip of hands
one shallow breath one raspy
eyelash irritating its own eye blink
every word a smog and pink dust erasure
swift and swallow at wing true blue of larkspur
your foot raised and set down each step
Gale Batchelder has work published in Colorado Review, Lily Poetry Review, What Rough Beast (Indolent Books), SpoKe4, Amethyst Arsenic, and White Whale Review. Her book, Chalk Song, a poetic collaboration with Judson Evans and Susan Berger-Jones, was published in 2021 by Lily Poetry Review Books. Chalk Song is an engagement with “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” Werner Herzog’s documentary about paleolithic cave art. Gale’s work is included in two anthologies of ekphrastic poems, New Smoke and Triumph of Poverty, from Off the Park Press. Recently she has collaborated with teXtmoVes in a performance of her poem, The Body Apologies. Gale lives in Cambridge, MA.