steep rustle and a creak hardly anything sounds like birdsong anymore. the artifacts are six feet over-the- moon kind of fork gets lost in the utensil drawer. when you finally find a knife (and what's even the point anymore) you say with a heavy heaving sigh and yes, we make break- fast on the long dining room table. when you are explicit, i am complicit. bachata is funny now that you insist that we are dance partners after november and—dammit, the avocado i picked is underripe for the fourth time this week. someone stop me from tripping on the ground beneath oil slicks, and maybe we can find an under-the-sun spoon on new year's day.
and it is home enjambment derives from the french word to stride over, sings of anything that questions the fabric's hem. i want to sew seams and patches and embroider flowers into empty pockets on mornings where the hackney meets the grassy underfoot of relief. by which i mean i want to hold myself as a person whose home is breaths of liminality, enjambed between city streets and striding over the borders of the pacific. i always lose my way. maps are helpful, but i remember the left bank and the way i just kept turning and hoping i'd end up on a familiar street, and i wanted to stop and talk to the seamstress that one afternoon on the seine. ask her about how to sew seams. patchwork. i've always been little grafted bits of people i've loved, and when people say that falling in love is a rarity, i laugh and think of the man who stopped me on the street and yelled "SHOE GAME!" to anyone who would listen. shovel and dirt, i dug myself into the sidewalk and wanted to tell him that i'd had these shoes for years, that i shine them myself, that the lining is holding strong. things have a togetherness. and maybe that's what the enjambment of nail polish-stained jeans really refers to—the migratory monarchs passing through, all orange and fluttering. i move with the same wingbeat. seasonally, i run to the edge and find new people to love so ardently that my head aches in vibrato and my heart sings in a staccato so pointed that, no joke, my resting heart rate is 120 beats per minute. and get this, it's always like that, it's always like that, it's always like that night when i stood under that streetlight off bilby road and felt my chin tilt skyward. i kissed the dusk that day, and it tastes of nutmeg. walk over, stride over, enjamb the evening sky. it feels like patchwork.
Beeper Peddle is a writer and healer living on the East Coast. She lives with her partner and their beloved soul puppy. Beeper writes about sorrows, lies, and deep loves. When you read her work, you will dip down into her heart and end up in all manner of body parts. Should you find yourself reflected in these words, it is merely coincidence; however, it does not surprise her you share the same heart. Find her at bethpeddle.com and @beeperpeddle on Twitter and Instagram
Giovanna Lomanto is a Bay Area poet and teaching artist. She’s an alumnus of U.C. Berkeley and a current MFA candidate at NYU’s low-residency program. Her work has been featured on KALW, the Worth-Ryder Art Gallery, and the Flor y Canto Literary Festival. She is the author of two poetry collections: no body in particular (Scrambler Books, 2019) and jupiter fell out the sky last night (Bound to Brew, 2021). You can follow her on Instagram @giovanna_lomanto for updates on future projects. She currently resides in Oakland, CA with her friends, most notably her lionhead bunny Maggie.