Author | Michael Sandler Something itches just beyond my reach. A transcendental urge I need to scratch which brings me to your missing lover’s touch Michael Sandler’s poems have appeared in more than 30 journals, including California Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Zone 3. For his day job, he works in the Seattle area as an arbitrator.
Ancestis
Not a nose tingling in the dentist chair,
more like the phantom toe of an amputee—
though it insists, my hand can’t make it there.
to cope with randomness? Insensate fear
that meanings pass? Intangibility
makes the discomfort worse, it isn’t fair,
that pacified these rubors of despair.
It rubs me how relief is transitory:
your deft fingers, abrogated too quickly…
save for a corrective dream where your grazes—
teasingly stroked as a cat’s paw—abrade me.About the Author
