By Kate Fox
A glance held long and a stolen kiss,
This is how I remember you best.
—Richard Shindell
Little fires light themselves in the hearth, like tongues
____of flame that reclaim the Holy Spirit, like pitchforks
in this clapboard house where mayflies swarm and crackle
____against the porch light. On down, a gas station, a five-and-dime,
and your house, which I can see from the kitchen, where
____clothes on the line billow and collapse, billow and collapse.
This small town holds everything I will ever know and have
____to leave behind: bidden and forbidden glances,
voices from the second-floor landing that warn, Go no further.
____Night will fall and you will fall with it. Which is what I want,
for the universe to take up where I leave off, this longing
____so deep it can hold entire planets in its bottomless pocket,
yet shrink to the size of a finger at the hollow of your neck,
____heart drawing blood from the branchwork of your breathing.
Kate Fox is the author of The Lazarus Method, a poetry manuscript, and two poetry chapbooks: The Lazarus Method, published by Kent State University Press, and Walking Off the Map, published by Seven Kitchens Press. She lives in Athens, Ohio, with her partner, Bob DeMott and their English Setter, Katie.
Originally appeared in NOR 29
New Ohio Review 