Poetry: Sandra Lim

CLIFFS

Words are afraid up here.

The rapture and the terrifying exposure.

Strange birds roosting, a human voice shouting a world’s-end shout.

Snow hurries to the meeting, wanting to cover the waking in my body.

I could fill up the sea with this waking.

The outlook is thrilling; it satisfies.

It goes even farther than the view from the heights of love.

It eats the roof off the sky.

My radiant loneliness, imagining me under ruin of starlight.

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Sandra Lim is the author of Loveliest Grotesque (Kore Press, 2006). Her work has appeared in Boston ReviewDenver QuarterlyColumbia Poetry ReviewAmerican Letters & Commentary, and other journals. She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.