Fort Marcy
Here is the frail mystique of the woman
Idling away the late afternoon loafing in a
Wooden chair on a wooden deck. Only her hand
Is draped slovenly over the arm of the chair in a ray
Of fickle light, only her legs extend past themselves
Onto other wooden platforms in other leggy realms,
Only her jaw remains fixed in enduring malcontent –
Around her feet, brunette leaves sleep through
Their dreams and do not burn to know them
In the morning when they are burned by the heat
Of the shrieking sun itself – What else could they
Have done? Evening steals into the fading shades of the late
Afternoon: shades of a sleeping woman, of an empty ashtray,
Of a romance novel adorned with a split-spine
And a tale that is jarring, redolent, familiar in the way
That an old perfume is familiar, in the way that a white skirt
Taking the form of a cloud in the wind is familiar.
Familiar in the way that two breezes never are.
As a bobcat and a coyote brawl in the yellow brush
Twenty feet beneath the wooden deck, so goes
The mercurial veering of the mountain air that demands
Time stand by itself, separate from the moments and
The movements which define it – We are here and not
Quite there, not quite willing to wake the woman sleeping
In the chair beside us, and
I do not think we will endeavor hardly
Instead, we will look on ahead
Of us, to the mountains steeped
In blue and grey dreamscapes and the setting
Of our red Southwestern sun, and below us,
To the dead lives of those gallant coyotes
We wanted to keep as pets
When we were five and seven years old,
Living in the lunate shadows of our youth.
enough to do what we should.
Instead, we will look on ahead
Of us, to the mountains steeped
In blue and grey dreamscapes and the setting
Of our red Southwestern sun, and below us,
To the dead lives of those gallant coyotes
We wanted to keep as pets
When we were five and seven years old,
Living in the lunate shadows of our youth.
Afterglow in B Minor
I will sing for you in alto and soprano,
When you wake up in the morning
And I smell your breath: chocolate, honey, fields
Of lavender under storm clouds, last April –
Rain. You’ll turn into my collarbone
And hold yourself still. You’ll breathe into
My ancient parchment and I’ll hum a little bit,
I’ll hum a little bit for it.
We’ll be best friends first – how we get close –
Though you’ll try to be much closer for a long, long time.
One night we’ll fall asleep on bunk beds, drunk beds,
You’ll crawl down to me, and I’ll sing for you
Because you’re what I’ll want to know.
We won’t be linear, we won’t be happy,
But I’ll bet you can chase me, pin me, slay me –
You’ll have a dream and then you’ll fall asleep
In the middle of my favorite movie, and I’ll always
Wake you up for the ending, for the heartbreak
And all of the grace in your face in the television light,
Midnight-thirty, you’re double-chinned and
Wrinkled skin, you’re knock-kneed and ugly,
Obeying me and betraying me and replaying me –
You’ll not have been the only one. Then
I’ll stutter when I tell you I don’t want children,
And you: “Let me change your mind,”
(But your honey! Your lavender!) I will never
Change my mind. You’ll be resolute, but
We’ll be young – plenty of time for that
Later, you’ll get out of bed and turn off the ceiling fan.
There’ll be no more white noise
And I will be too hot.
We will fall ill to one another, and the fever
Will not break, even when we do. Come the end,
We will have spent just seconds looking into
The anatomies of love, of trust, of late night
Macaroni and cheese, and you will not understand
Why I stopped seeing beauty in the way our light
Chases itself on bedroom walls in early mornings,
Why I felt like a raisin lying next to you
After you sat at your desk all day crushing grapes
Under the weight of your tongue.
I’ll be surprised when you let me know
You’re leaving. I’ll miss the bitter chocolate
In your teeth – my poignant handling of this lavender
Scarring my joy – I will feel my skin for the first time
In months. I will push you out of the window
After you’ve already left, and I will remember
The stain of your body on the pavement below me.
Dear – I know. And all that I know, I know from
Singing. And all that we will sometime be,
I’ve sung at least once before.
Haunt
It is the rueful promise of this sweet-hot August night
To remind a heartsick couple within throes of youthful lust
That shadows cast by sunshine follow us to moonlight.
These summer nights are lonely, but they are short and finite
We’ve only one more season ‘til the longest, darkest dusk –
Still remains the rueful promise of this sweet-hot August night.
We roam along decrepit fences in the furtive wild, out of sight
Though empty spaces call our names, we walk on because we must
For shadows cast by sunshine follow us to moonlight.
The air about us warms with fervor wringing tight, tight, tight –
And for one brief moment, we believe we may adjust
To the ever-rueful promise of this sweet-hot August night.
You take my hand and kiss the cruelest words you can recite
The owl coos, the cricket cries, the buried bone turns to dust
Because shadows cast by sunshine always follow us to moonlight.
Daylight romance cannot soothe the nighttime lover’s plight
Tender words unfold in yellow light we cannot trust –
So goes the rueful promise of the sweet-hot August night,
Shadows cast by sunshine forever follow us to moonlight.
Sydney Vance is in her third year of undergrad studies at the University of Central Oklahoma, and she is pursuing both a major in creative writing and a minor in humanities. She is a freelance poet who spends her time outside of school working part-time, writing, or playing with her orange cat.
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