We listened to the ceaseless tick of the clock in the hall
and spoke about growing old together. You said,
“It wouldn’t be so bad as we thought.”
“Birds,” you claimed, “have both wings and feet.”
When I woke the air was filled not with the scent
of your cologne, nor the gentle hum of blues riffs.
All that now remains are sheets that lay scattered,
crumpled, like the restless sea and the faded lily.
Its petals mark the days, one at a time
falling in heaps upon the nightstand
and I press each between the pages
of the book you abandoned, half finished.
If only you had left your shadow behind as well,
so that in your absence I could still trace
the outline of your body.…
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In the bay, as always, I think about plunging into the water. Far out in the surf are porpoises, but no fish are biting. The path curved around the island and we looked into it: eyes into eyes, and holly branches improbably stretching upward where the sky is grey. Later, I had questions for you— like where were you looking when I was on the edge of the water. Why are we always standing next to each other, but not facing each other? Which part of the island is more stable. Which part bows to salt spray. When will the solid land become a series of smaller islands? In the sunken forest, the trees were pruned by saltwater. I feel very far away from my own body.…
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Bright jade jack pines
strike against sky,
surround the lake in full,
a catch to keep
the magic in.
Whiskey Jacks perch, invisible.
Their whistles and chirrups
bounce between branches,
stir the air as a paddle
stirs water, ripples peeling
from the blade with every dip.
Paddle until dark,
circle until your arms burn
and shoulders ache,
until the lake trout stop
their trick flips
and the sky opens.
Night turns it transparent,
fades the sky in slow gradient,
bright blue soaking into black
like wet spill into rag.
It lets the light through,
magnetic pinpoints of flood
that sew lake and sky close,
the gap between pressed thin,
every prick and sparkle
reflected, carried on the ripples
of your blood stream, spinning
with the cells, a golden match, stars so thick they could be water. …
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A medieval circle dance
We are turtles.
That is correct.
We have grown shells
firm and round
and we know how to use them.
If you wait,
we will stretch our orange-speckled necks,
show you the strength of our legs.
If you wait, we will run.
You are not elephants.
That is correct.
Although you have their eyes,
each of you,
deep and seeing.
Your fingers give you away,
and the many small connections in your feet.
You touch the earth lightly,
flex to what’s beneath.
They are horses.
That is correct.
Everything lithe and sure
that we dreamed we could be
but always woke before seeing.
We—the almost-elephants and the turtles—
watch breathless:
they herd and flow,
rolling the earth’s orbit as they pass.
In the dust and silence they leave behind
we unfold our legs and necks,
gather ourselves into a circle
and dance,
letting our bodies sway
with the things we’ve seen,
the things we believe.…
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What I wouldn’t give
for another morning like that one:
I brought you Kona coffee and sunny-side-up eggs,
pausing momentarily at the bedroom door,
teak tray perched on my fingertips, to watch
you float on the rippling blue comforter,
a still life, swimming a statuesque side-stroke.
The birds in the branches outside
our bedroom window capered about in the yellow-breasted
sunlight.
The maple tree, wrapped in wet brown bark,
sprouted buds
bejeweled by last night’s fog—
the same little beads which slid down
your naked skin in the shower,
dawn after presumptive dawn.
I sip my coffee alone now, in the first anodyne rays
of the mourning hours, measuring my life
in birdsong–plaintive and palliative.
– Greg Maddigan…
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after a line of Stallings
What started as hers has now become his,
stolen from burnished sands of the past like
all the lost poems wrapped around corpses,
forgotten in fragments he mimics in these
stuttering verses where white spaces show breaks.
What started as “hers” has now become “his”
slipped in innocently (or not) by a scribe’s miss,
the original line unsung in a tomb, black
with other lost poems wrapped around corpses.
The cuts on her skin speak of iron’s sharp kiss
like vellum now scarred by metal and ink.
What started as hers has now become his
excuse for impeding all progress.
He’s combing through history’s waves in the wrack
to find her lost poems wrapped around corpses
as if only her words could undo all this
as if one translation could bring her life back.…
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i. You find her in the summertime. She is down near the Gulf beyond the highway billboards that offer penitence to women with healthy wombs. She looks like a poppy field with ripped overalls and thin, Georgia hair and you imagine she will taste like the same cigarettes her mother died on. This is a place you’ll only find behind dancing eyelids, fasting on sleep and long-term memory.
ii. You find her later in the showers of early fall, when the harvest moon carries her over the Mason Dixon line. In a dream, you tattoo a promise you both made across your wrists and you decide you will live there. It is not the first or the last crossed-out promise you both will make together. You tell her you love her the same way Gulf waters love their tropical storms.…
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