What is that little grating chink
in college girls’ voices, like the chirp
of glass marbles rubbed together
in a child’s palm?
It is some kind of hope
they are grinding in their throats,
a virus they catch from one another.
It is like birds that cock their heads
at the foot of picnic tables.|
They think it will fetch them something.
from Robyn Sarah’s Pause for Breath, Biblioasis, 2009