Not Persephone
tonight you’re feeling a little vulturish: in your tuxedo: it’s not a pomegranate on your silver tray: and she’s not Persephone: but you offer it to her anyway: she is weary of the way the paring knife slides out of the wall: or how peeling painting of your ancestors: framed as they are: revert to feathers: the curtains cascade to a pool: ripple and sway: a staircase next to them: that has no beginning: play Miles Davis: cool and sublime: dancing her closer to a painting of steps: spiraling up and away: you ask if it’s okay: to call her by a mythical name: she hunches her shoulders: stares at the currents below: she got that look in her eye: the one that says I could make this work
for Seth Abramson
Island
perhaps
the body drifts: the bed edges closer to the water: the towering
flower growing from the true center of the mattress: is your personal
tree of knowledge: as you curl yourself to sleep around its trunk:
you watch the stars reflected from the surface of the still sea:
small fish mocking the moon’s silvery shocked expression: coming up
close enough to scoop with your hand: you fantasize umbrellas: but
not as some droll coverage: more as sails to catch wind: pull this
knuckle of land in a direction: you feel the clouds slipping through
you: as though you are some ghost: a shipwrecked sole survivor:
having spent this lifetime: on a bedrock: and a salvaged bed: each
light on the horizon: a hopeful bonfire: blinking a billion years ago
Bio: J. P. Dancing Bear is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently, Inner Cities of Gulls (2010, Salmon Poetry). His poems have been published in DIAGRAM, No Tell Motel, Third Coast, Natural Bridge, Shenandoah, New Orleans Review, Verse Daily and many other publications. He is editor for the American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press. Bear also hosts the weekly hour-long poetry show, Out of Our Minds, on public station, KKUP. His next collection, Family of Marsupial Centaurs (and other birthday poems), is forthcoming from Iris Pres.