By Maureen Alsop
They were those who carried light through the house — ghost-less aftereffects. I stayed silent on the telephone, and heard their voices lean against a drugstore wall(somewhere west, perhaps from Eau Claire).
Adjoining equals. He still carried her bloodshed in him. Her heart zipped down into a small thicket of shells & trinkets.
Meanwhile I carried the gray nothingness, the upland at midnight.
Wider eyes watched not thinking. Citrine cleanses the border where the trace of a cigarette rests under my heel. They always traveled by wind; a heavy movement of white shredding maple’s blood-colored leaves.
In the periphery, a fin slid out. Across my being. So that my hand looked deep and dual on the blues over metal: water, a dirty smile. So then, I too was subtle.
In sunshade, a meaningless swagger of ankle-low headstones. They called me. Over the stickpin horizon. Cordovan-red indicators. After an entire century without showing my calves —
But their images of automobiles as emblematic, like a tarot, weren’t they more a series of rooms the body made as one went traveling? Inside, my night stockings /worn smaller/, I held myself as slightly known and undecided.
Maureen Alsop, PhD is the author of two full collections of poetry, Mantic (Augury Books) and Apparition Wren. Her most recent poems have appeared at Watershed Review, Citron Review, and ditch poetry.
