Cedar Riverside, 2019

 

It wasn’t long ago that you were mine

pretending shivers were windy sighs

and coughs were just antecedents 

to heaven

So much of me was filled with light

 

But too soon Cedar Avenue shivers with 

hot waves of nausea 

and every morning the sky coughs its defeat 

into the sink

 

the black jelly of exhaustion

built up in a hand or a leg 

its walnut-sour 

stain coating the apartments

 

we used to populate  

with honeysuckle

ice creamy mouths and Sunday morning coffee

 

How to relieve these expired recollections

 

We cut around their borders

like cankers but then

the holes encroach

God, how easily we let

memories ride us like horses 

 

We ate dinner 

at the Acadia Cafe

before you left

 

and heaven was a concert 

where all the listeners were deaf

 

and the afternoon’s stomach acid

burned through its atmosphere  

like sunshine on sliced tomatoes