By Robert Thomas 

Featured Art: Yak by Mary Alice Woods, Jason Licht, and Tibetan Monks Visiting Passion Works Studio

I didn’t lose you to a matador
in flat slippers and a sequined jacket.
I didn’t lose you to a match’s glow
you followed into a hummingbird’s nest.
I didn’t lose you to Bruce or Abby,
though Bruce could bawl blues like a baying hound
and Abby danced like a leaf in a storm.
I didn’t lose you to a silent drum
or a curtain call or a summer sheen.
No, I lost you to incomparable
suave death in tights and tank top, his slick
disco two-step. While he took you for a spin
in his roadster, his red Alfa Spider,
I rode in the rain on his rumble seat.

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Originally appear in NOR 27.

Robert Thomas’ Lyrical novella Bridge (BOA Edition) received the PEN Center USA Library Award for Fiction. His first book, Door to Door (Fordham) was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the Poets Out Loud Prize, and his second collection, Dragging the Lake, was published by Carnegie Mellon. He has received an NEA poetry fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. His crown of sonnets, “Negligee and Hatchet,” won first prize in the 2019 Nimrod Pablo Neruda Poetry Contest.