"I'd forgotten what the undersides of leaves look like..."
More Perihelion:
Bob Sward's Writer's Friendship Series
A quick list to poets featured in this issue:
Match Girl
What if
instead of striking each alone
to sputter
into the unquenchable night,
you had
bound them all up,
frail sulphurous sticks,
struck them all at a blow
on the brick and hurled
that fiery brand through
the frosted plate glass?
burned up
the lace tablecloths,
the balustrades, the roast goose!
Melted the brass stove
and the seven-armed candlesticks!
Let the flames careen into the sky—
consume the stars themselves
and scorch God's whiskers!
That conflagration of wealth could surely
have warmed your hands then, match-girl,
miniature handmaiden of rage.
Hans
wanted you frozen black,
cold testament to passersby
of heavenly reward.
I prefer you
dancing on the ashes,
sooty cheeks ruddy underneath
with heat, skirt kilted up
about your knees, and eyes ablaze.
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Virginia Reel
In the gloaming I fell for a girl fiddler. For her alone I wanted
to cheer out of need, not the begrudging obligation of the crowd,
a reminder that old songs are hungry gods that demand tribute.
I'd forgotten what the undersides of leaves look like, the intricacy
of each veiny path blooming exponentially outward like raggle-taggle gypsies,
like torn stained letters, like desperate men with a price on their heads.
Somewhere a man oils Spanish leather boots with care and places them
beneath an empty bed. Somewhere the root of a briar splits
damp pine to wrap its first tendrils around a woman's skeleton.
The fiddle creaks and keens as a well-rosined bow draws dust close
around my girl, my lass in blue. I clap my hands until they sting, then cup
them softly together as if something dear was trapped between them.
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