my brother as my first poem
should reverie find you
listening at memory’s mouth,
press your ear against
the plastic cup suspended,
hold tight to the frayed cord
and follow it down –
whose ear is
smashed on the other side,
crinkling behind
the green couch?
who darts in
to perforate the blank ness
of when
we were small:
I was balled in tiny fists
of laughter, punctuating the harmony
of our great grandma Lu’s sawing snore
the night you were born
newly sister, writing us names
and singing to you
poems about books
and church
Shallows
the gulls press points into
the shallows where we stand,
dipping our knees.
both hands
cresting
like the teal tug
that rakes our legs and lets
go in a thousand trajectories,
innumerable, even
as we count them.
Stowaway
The first time I knew I loved you,
even I didn’t believe it.
I tucked my feelings into friendship,
small stowaways meant to vanish
in the vagaries of miles soon between us.
Back home,
I peeled off my summer skin.
But the sun clung to autumn’s arms
and I bronzed in their embrace once
more. The leaves lived on, taking
their time to crest and fall.
I took a lover,
and didn’t fall in love.
New year dawned, orange
spilling on the blue back of spring.
I watched the crust of cold at last cement,
cloaking the trees in slinky coats,
and donned my own,
when my hands, nosing
for warmth in winter pockets,
found love like a five-dollar bill,
crumpled and scrawled with your name.
Abigail Michelini is an English instructor at Northampton Community College working on her doctorate in English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She has been a lover of poetry since she was 8-years-old, when she and her dad started memorizing poems together. It has remained a life force for her ever since.
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