Lobe

By Atsuro Riley
The coarse croker-sack cloth                                         
 
she’d grown to clutch                                         
 
mesh-merged with her                                         
 
woof and pang                      
 
rose to serve                                         
 
more like organ                                         
 
than protection                                         

Notes:

This is the first published version of the poem, as it appeared in Poetry magazine in 2017. The poem has since been significantly revised; the revised definitive version can be found in Atsuro Riley's collection Heard-Hoard (2021).

Source: Poetry (September 2017)