(after Sappho)
The one at the French bakery
with the last chocolate croissant—
now he shares a booth with you, my love
at the Bluebonnet Diner. God, must I
see this, glued by sweat to the plastic stool at the counter.
His hand, his left hand, strokes his bicep as if he already knows
what arouses you. He drinks you, your music, your story.
I clutch a glass of iced tea against my trembling mouth.
The waitress swivels from the grill,
asks what I want. To die.
Was it only this morning, your head on my pillow
hair frizzed from the summer heat—
your nails graze my arm...
Wake up, baby, wake up.
Ultraviolet
Time is a foreign tongue, love is velocity & one open window.
Let’s compare fingerprints. I see you, I’m holding
this moment like a kite, like a puppy on a leash.
I find you, soaring above crawling traffic.
My dreamy choreographer. Alchemist of pleasure.
It’s a long breathless climb over minutes & hours & days away.
Our whisperings are luna moths rising over a winter field.
A dream-quilt of hummingbirds.
Light shifts constantly through our brief season.
Cyanotic, then steely, then faintly yellow.
We live in an absence of sequence.
While we sleep intertwined I dream your face.
Rain freezes as it falls on last summer’s stalks.
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Ellen Miller-Mack is a poet, nurse practitioner and blues lover. "Hot Tamale Blues" can be heard weekly at WMUA 91.1 FM She has an MFA in Poetry from Drew University. Her poetry book reviews can be found online and she has a poem forthcoming in Lily Poetry Review. Ellen is a co-author of The Real Cost of Prisons Comix ( PM Press). She co-hosts "Poet Talk" on WMUA, Tuesdays at 6 pm EST, and the podcast can be found on Spotify.
Ellen Miller-Mack is a poet, nurse practitioner and blues lover. "Hot Tamale Blues" can be heard weekly at WMUA 91.1 FM She has an MFA in Poetry from Drew University. Her poetry book reviews can be found online and she has a poem forthcoming in Lily Poetry Review. Ellen is a co-author of The Real Cost of Prisons Comix ( PM Press). She co-hosts "Poet Talk" on WMUA, Tuesdays at 6 pm EST, and the podcast can be found on Spotify.
