Poetry
Having left work early this spring / afternoon, I feel no rush / to be anywhere but here and now, / even waiting at this reluctant light,
I don’t remember if I ever cleaned my house. I’m sure we / never heard birdsong. Some cried. Some of us got quite thin.
The clutch of white peonies I hold by my side are floppy / with dew dripping down my leg. / I am late too.
She’d toss a quilt made from our outgrown skirts / over the faded couch and lie there, / holding the ache, rocking it to sleep…
They woke to the primal sway / of grass, cold fire. Here was // a light rain falling from the eyelid / of the sky.
The doctor clicks his pen and says it’s just a phase. / My fat moon-face comes second to the x-rays // he pulls from a folder labeled with my room number. / I’m taking 75mgs of Prednisone a day.
I hear you just beyond reach / of the flickering light of / the TV, which you’ve kindled / as a kind of controlled burn
Given an infinite universe, / given a finite body, / given the bounding constellations
/ of atoms that trace the flesh…
And, eventually, we remember only the deepest/ gloom, waiting still for the sudden suspense / of illumination—