Photo by Lawrence Krowdeed
Listen, Margaret:
Stelios Mormoris
you can elect
to take my clock of calls
and join me in a bar
over cherried old-fashioneds
or stay home and implore
your needles of despair
to withdraw from seams
they can’t seem to tighten.
Expose the parting wounds.
Let them bleed
their carnal soliloquy.
Terrify me if you have to.
Read Leviticus. Read the Times
by a fire in the hearth.
Prod your cinders hooded
in smoke. Or make merriment
and stare into a luminous ball
dangling on glints
of silver thread among angels
frozen in papier-mâché.
Listen, Margaret: remove
the dried bouquets
arranged in a hatch
across your jaundiced sheets
of stationery where you wrote
trains of o’s & x’s.
Stop baiting for apologies
that never come
the way a choir of clouds
thicken with snow
that never drop
while you pace a braided rug.
I spied you in a pane
of mottled glass
in your cottage in Vermont,
arranging zinnias out of season.
I spotted in the village green
a warren of crows
hinging on the clapboard
steeple, holding court,
refusing to fly in resolution
until, finally, it snowed.
You then came out
swaddled in shearling and alpaca
to a chrysalis of children’s voices.
I saw you mouth a carol.
I sang with you
from careful distance
as the kindergarten climbed
the flurried ridge
singing alternate refrains
in old high German.
They formed a flowing brow
of scarves against the snow
–a wizardry of silvered red
and orange yarn and fringe
disappearing on sleds
to where you hid in shadow
listening to laughter.
Stelios Mormoris
you can elect
to take my clock of calls
and join me in a bar
over cherried old-fashioneds
or stay home and implore
your needles of despair
to withdraw from seams
they can’t seem to tighten.
Expose the parting wounds.
Let them bleed
their carnal soliloquy.
Terrify me if you have to.
Read Leviticus. Read the Times
by a fire in the hearth.
Prod your cinders hooded
in smoke. Or make merriment
and stare into a luminous ball
dangling on glints
of silver thread among angels
frozen in papier-mâché.
Listen, Margaret: remove
the dried bouquets
arranged in a hatch
across your jaundiced sheets
of stationery where you wrote
trains of o’s & x’s.
Stop baiting for apologies
that never come
the way a choir of clouds
thicken with snow
that never drop
while you pace a braided rug.
I spied you in a pane
of mottled glass
in your cottage in Vermont,
arranging zinnias out of season.
I spotted in the village green
a warren of crows
hinging on the clapboard
steeple, holding court,
refusing to fly in resolution
until, finally, it snowed.
You then came out
swaddled in shearling and alpaca
to a chrysalis of children’s voices.
I saw you mouth a carol.
I sang with you
from careful distance
as the kindergarten climbed
the flurried ridge
singing alternate refrains
in old high German.
They formed a flowing brow
of scarves against the snow
–a wizardry of silvered red
and orange yarn and fringe
disappearing on sleds
to where you hid in shadow
listening to laughter.