Poetry | Short Fiction | Creative Nonfiction
One brief clash with a batted lash
And in that blindered, lossless moment did I pawn
Everything to be with you: so how do you do?
And under this spell, we do so remain
For the snap of a finger, then slip and away
Before the vows can have their say
A lusty panache, drawn to eyes, and ass
I will again, and soon, give my heart away
In a peerless fraction of the live-long day
Yours truly, P.S.
My head once more is turned
To flirt is divine, is what I’ve learned
I wrote that your face was
The source of all light
But my maladroit fingers and
Two spastic thumbs
Bungled light into ‘blight’
In the draft, late at night
And hit ‘send’ for good measure
From this, no good comes
the way doors swing
things hinge upon things
the piano lid of the world is
like a canopy for our unhinged lives
swinging in the trees below
hangers-on learning the grips
I held you once, like that
like a hinge bearing the two halves of us
and the pins of it released
the sweetest, breathless refrain
like a sprung garden gate
whispering open, then close
swaying in the greens
I
A face print on a
pillow, still-warm sheets
the craft-of-us, it blossoms
in our every scampering
thought, we will pester the
day’s frame maker for more
pinches and squeals, yet
draw from depths a love
that ever comes, even
as we sleep.
II
a dimpled morning light crawls
up the arm of another day, advancing
like a rash, and the bathroom mirror
scans my face, while my mind’s eye
scans yours
forgiveness, like a parade with floats
sure, but the slope of this patch
will drain and pool somewhere
a tepid steep of contrition
that’s what it reminds me of
when we pretend to agree
I zip my face closed and cough up a
smile, perfected in its shambles
and relaxed, like a prickly thing
warding off the bothers
with preemptive skin
III
the thread of these laundered sheets
that can’t retain the lay of her land
I pull the lint filter from the dryer
and mount it, framed, to the wall
bedposts still lean to the slant of her
repose, window-light leering, wants
are cooing and teasing in the heat
of breathing, I awaken to the elbows
of memory and cool wet spots
the small talk of exquisite missteps
a specter haunting the big tent
with its randy elephants and clowns
Stacks of plastic containers
and lids that don’t fit
—I don’t quite fit her
containers agape, lidless.
Containers sitting open
—she doesn’t love me
and what was contained is
open to the air and spoiling.
remixing memories for
a new take on a
shuffled past
(but there’s some things
I just can’t do
about you)
in root love, in fulfillment
sudo untether the world
and its conceptions of you, me, of places
we might withdraw, finally together
never apart, it will shake space and time
free of its dreamy, contrived bandwidth
of heartbreaking denials, and let us
download all the forevers that have
so beguiled us lovebirds
in all this heat, the memory of those
cold looks you used to give me
come packaged in a little comfort
but there’s a kind of cool that sidesteps
temperature, like a fever chill that only
makes the burning more unbearable
you used to really cook my oats in
that dazzling cool, that face of yours
an entire opera in there, the allure of
an unsolved codex, just waiting to
spill out a heart-rending aria
after enough of us have died
imagined
no, better: remembered
a charged beginning
the craving, the abyss of
gorgeous eyes and a
lifetime of memories
flash before me
(did we have children or not?)
in that moment: we are
born, and then blink
wink out, about the time
our grandchild would have
slipped into adulthood
but you snubbed me
at hello
steadfast, we stand up
to gravity, a balancing act
in postponing
the fall
then love comes along
now relief in the falling, alas
just an act
after all
