Alyse Knorr

Portrait Number Six

She took me to an Egyptian bakery
and we bought bagels from a woman
with shaking hands and all red costume jewelry.
Outside, men unloaded boxes from trucks and
an orange car backed into a parallel parking place.
When she reached for her change, her arm moved
out of her sleeve so that I could see her wrist,
and I felt the brief, familiar surge.
Outside, she put her hands in her coat pockets
and we started walking,
the subway below us and the sky above.





Stellar Era Ends

Our hands find each other even now, in this growing dark.
Somehow, your light reaches me and spreads its
Opal brilliance into my bones, into my
Open mouth.  To say that we have lived to see this—but there will be
No one to tell.   Of mornings in the garden, kissing your
Neck and smelling basil and earth and sweat.
Only now can we rejoice in this great
Wholeness, this great death.
My life has consisted of a handful of pulsings, of
Years waiting for this time—the time of
Losing all light, losing
Ourselves, and the
Very memory of
Everything else.





Alyse Knorr is the poetry editor of So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, based out of George Mason University, where she is pursuing her MFA in poetry and teaching undergraduate English. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Salamander, Cold Mountain Review, The Minnesota Review, elimae, Moria, Dark Sky Magazine, and the online anthology Poetry Ark, among others.