The Red Tents
It hardly matters now, to tell you what I saw:
myself, as you
neck like a stork's, blinking up into the night
asking to be impermeable
maybe it matters more
Pouring constellation into the coffee, I forget about transience. The red tents downtown
serve as clue: there will be a little disaster here
blood and cherry juice,
You will bear witness to it.
Avow and forget premonition, then:
The pen spit,
aphids silently invaded all the linen,
peppering quilted white—
I, sunburned by love
I saw a lot last Good Friday
but voided intuition at embrace.
His touch claims
I am without grounds
but even science has a prophet
logic, a tongue:
if I try to save you
then I will be restrained.
Schema
Conventional Love Song
1.
It's 9 PM on Saturday night and you are at home
simultaneously wearing
shorts and a winter scarf.
You determine there is no one left to love,
but check your messages as though someone
out there can hear you, your thoughts
and they will make it their personal
business to prove you wrong.
You're not sure why there is no one
around to stand entirely too close
to you, as you attempt to determine why and how
they became the new smattering of light
in the window come morning.
2.
Everyone on earth
is still a baby:
red in the face, mouth rounded
for an inconsolable holler:
I awake
thirsty and there is never enough of you.
All the babies in the whole world, crying.
3.
Do you know of that look, the silver
sick that can pour from your eyes onto the One
who adores you? They feel
how you bewitch
their joints, tie them into pretzel knots.
I hate the way you eye
my collarbone as though it were the conceivable universe.
Hate that one day is two with you:
too late, too long,
too slow, too quiet
too familiar,
banal,
benign.
Alexus Erin is a fourth-year student at Franklin University in Lugano, Switzerland, but originally hails from Princeton, New Jersey. Her first novel was published in 2009. Her poetry previously appeared in Franklin University's Literary Magazine, as well as the American Society of Young Poets. Any free time she manages, she spends choreographing modern dance routines for troupes of children.