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Leora Fridman

When they tell me dogs sweat / through their paws, I am still thinking of ways / to drape attraction across another face.


All Day I Shopped For a Way

to say, hallelujah, you unfamiliar courtesans,
I have prepared all of this for you
even before I could know I was loving,
before I could know I wanted cloth drawn
across my eyes. Hello, sexy little cardigan:
you have become a waste. In other trashes
than my trash there is no clothing, but in this fantasy
we have to rid ourselves of so much. I would prefer
no one were chatting me up on such a cautious occasion,
but there you have it: our sweat is the part of us
that can still be free. It is the sweat of animals
who distribute a continuous amount of virtue
across their uncovered skins and in so doing hope
against hope not to overheat. There is so little real
caution we need. When they tell me dogs sweat
through their paws, I am still thinking of ways
to drape attraction across another face. I am not
just another look. I am not performing what
you can and cannot allow. Any four-legged
mammal can find you that. No, here by the ledges
and porcelain shards, I am standing to greet
the cloth-like morning as it rises so familiar
over shops. I am tossing one more dollar
out to you.

If Discomfited

Dear Wendy, what
makes the morning such
a quiet sell? I dreamt
an older woman had cancer
all through her bones,
so I sat her down
with my own mother
in an airport gate. I thought
we could all read novels
and know. They laughed, and
there were tropical destinations
outside. Pages fluttered
so shining. My mother was
so light. Into the small air
I let an action shrink.
Into the giant rectangle
that is lying, I fake another
happiness for what else
I could win. Tell me, Wendy,
when you buy it does the light
leave you? Do you get glossy shame?
They talked loudly and
were never embarrassed by
the crinkling. Still new
to one another, they developed
an unfamiliar rapport. I knew
them less. In the current events
they whistled through there
was also attire. I saw planes
and thought, still: I have more
questions to wish for. I have
no other fight.


Leora Fridman is a writer, jam-maker, translator and educator living in Massachusetts. Her recent and forthcoming publications are included in The Offending Adam, Sixth Finch, Country Music, Horseless Review and others.