Poetry

How long I’ve dreamt of you, teenaged and long-legged, lying on our porch, 
your mud-speckled sandals kicked off to the side, watching a tree slowly split 

We found ourselves without our grandfather. We found ourselves faced 
with stacks of naked women and reels of naked women. We found ourselves 

When you hold
a slice 

of freshly cut
red melon 

to my lips,
I drink 

Sometimes I enter the small chambers of the God of Forgetting 
and take my place at his feet 
and kneel 
and bow my head.

From here I can see the children
running across the long field 

for no other reason
than
they are fast. 

Apples belong to the genus Malus. I stand with my hips pressing into the sink’s marble,
rinsing and twisting these sandy, gunmetal stems out of the fat fruit