Waiting in a Car Under Streetlights

This poem first appeared in issue seven of the LZ, “Remember Remember”, in 2014. LZ has long since gone to the big publication heaven in the sky, alongside many other small print wonders.

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The wax moon is diminished, drowned
in a thousand models, swallowed over
and over, in swollen globules screen-bound.
Yellow dusk caught in a mystic's glass.
The impression of these unfurling sounds,
Heaven or Las Vegas;
figure on a washed cyanotype
develops bright; my own heart flowers,
in an infinity of hours,
I blush, bloom, wet, wilt.

She strikes at the window —
I flinch, shatter.
She lurks around in the details of my mouth
and eyes. If I glance away she returns,
but look back, she smartly hides.

She stalks my waking moments,
talks in foreign voices on the radio, walks wildly
in my dreams;
I die living in our history,
but I cannot let her leave.