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Rebecca Lu Kiernan



Afterglow

If the moon laughed
It would be your voice
Unselfconscious with surrender
And if the crescent questioned me
There would be the slightest hesitation,
A soft breaking,
A promise of everything and nothing.

What carried me a thousand miles away?

You arrange yourself in the same fashion
Looming over the shoulder
Ambivalent, remote,
Sparking with stolen light
Creating the illusion
That you are of this earth.

Your solitary skill
Is catching shards of glass
In sparse beach grass.

I sleepwalk to a 3 a.m. diner.
Your face presses against the greasy window
Through fraying gingham curtains.

Your fingers drum impatiently
On the chess board floor
Angry as God
But not as forgiving
Biting your lip to whisper
Something I could never translate,
Hoping I would somehow absorb it
Just beneath the level of perceptibility

Like the obedient tide
Imagining it has plans of its own.




©2003 by Rebecca Lu Kiernan


Rebecca Lu Kiernan's fiction and poetry have appeared in Ms Magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, North American Review, and other magazines and books. Her poetry collection, Sex With Trees and Other Things Equally Responsive, was published by 2River Press. She received a Rhysling nomination for her piece, "When A Snake Bites You In The Ass."


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