Her Reply
He slipped her a poem
full of secret wishes, lush and delicate
as a mango wrapped in a silk scarf.
She folded it so as not to lose a word,
tucked it into her dresser drawer
beneath her black stockings.
Late at night, loneliness and longing
fierce as the metal of a gun,
she dreams of it there,
its face pressed to the nylon.
My Ex
Mine and not mine.
The prefix negates the possessive, cancels
us like a stamp on an envelope.
It suspends before and after, renders
us inert, lifeless like a taxidermic
squirrel. This paradoxical
phrase says we existed:
a word in a first draft,
stricken out—not gone. |
