After the Argument
Three months after the argument The steel blue collar of his sweater Twisted up as his head careened sideways And the lunch invitation was released Like the snorting bull before the matador. We ate triggerfish with cakebread wine. Everything in the bistro was lamb white. His lips were a bitten plum In the dying candlelight. My hands went amnesiac and blind To map him for the first time. We waved on the trolley And walked the hexagon lawn. We silenced the cicadas at the bruise black lake. We stopped at the bench where he first entered me. He said, “Do you remember Halloween?” I laughed like a ghost in his dream.
Rebecca Lu Kiernan has been published in Ms. Magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, and numerous books and magazines in the U.S. and Australia. Her first poetry collection Sex With Trees was published by 2 River Press. Ygdrasil Press published her second collection, The Man Who Remembered Too Much. She was nominated for a Rhysling award for the cautionary tale When a Snake Bites You in the Ass. She lives on the Gulf Coast.