Stuart Lishan

Lover boy! Look at you, spirit like dew,
even still, so self centered in your view.
Now your bones are dirt, the compost of my sky.
They live in a place where your flowers die

-- it's a hard truth your flowers come to know,
each autumn when their petals let them go.
Not even men outlast themselves. Their wives
can, and do, go on, happy with their lives.

Is lover boy depressed? Does his heart feel black?
Well, just follow me, hon; I won't turn back.
Hades is beautiful. We've our flowers, too,
in the weave of we've, in the blew of dark blue.

Stuart Lishan teaches in the English Department at theOhio State University. His work has recently been published in Mudlark, Kenyon Review, Barrow Street, La Petite Zine, Arts & Letters and American Literary Review. The poem in this issue is from a manuscript entitled Becoming Nearness, which was a finalist in the 2000 National Poetry Series.

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