|
We sit up for hours trying The yard glows with meanings Glass after glass maybe we're not to be trusted We see shapes: a serpent, we discern hieroglyphs my husband sees new shapes: a new From our cocoon of blankets and pinot II. green gleams--
Christina Cook is a student at Vermont College, where she is a candidate for the MFA in Poetry with a Concentration in Translation. Her poems have appeared in "Buckle &" and in "Poemeleon."
(December 2006).
Close this screen and the menu will appear. If frames-incompatible, Click Lunarosity
BACKYARD CONSTELLATION
Arcs and blinks
of light fill our yard.
These beetles are flying with fire
in their bellies. Thankfully,
the moist night air licks out the flames
before the backyard burns.
to make sense of their flight
and ours.
we can't decipher.
of wine. Blanket after blanket after
the day's heat has fled. Still,
ciphers of light dart through the dark
with their meanings. Maybe we'd
sell them to an atheist or,
if we didn't like what they revealed,
let our sons jar the scribes and
feed them to the cat.
a peacock, a lyre, a virgin: merely
answers found in the back
of a dot-to-dot book,
but cannot read them. So we fetch another blanket, pour
another glass, and talk about how much
they'd go for. . .
car, a new deck, a big-screen tv.
noir, we see scales suddenly fall away from the secrets
of the belly-fires. More than a serpent or peacock,
much more than a virgin or big-screen tv.
alarm clock digits
after our dark
all-night embrace
*
blinking,
wakening son, still
bedwarm, curling
into the curve of me *
sudden flash
of your anger
subsiding
over breakfast *
that instant of light
reaching our lawn
through the pines
*
bright yellow burst
between the trees,
our sons laughing
off the schoolbus *
the light flitting
its prism across
my cutting board *
the cat's tail brushing
against our blankets: tonight,
she'll go to sleep hungry.