Sophia Dahlin

Appear of Bodice
 
Your form is loitering among the trees
You take the time you want to leave
to anything
Your form is loitering
These downtown Oakland streets I like
These open nights like oceans or Olympic oceans
The open mattress feeling on the floor
I take the place
I can't take time
The sun is buoyed by its sentences
The book is nebulous with real fog
but the fog is generative
it forms

Your form is loitering among the trees
You are the olives grey and green
You are the wine
drunk wine that dries the tongue
above wine's head
the sky's birds masticate what clouds
are throaty closure of
I say, your form is loitering among the trees
it melts the space that ought be cut between
That's not a silhouette
That's a form I can't get to leave the forest
 

Sophia Dahlin is a poet in the East Bay of San Francisco, where she teaches generative poetry workshops, edits Eyelet Press with Jacob Kahn, and organizes poetry readings with Violet Spurlock and others. Her first book, Natch, came out with City Lights in 2020, and her second collection is forthcoming fall 2025. More work can be found at sophiadahlin.com