The Box
Last night, I exhumed your remains,
and there you lay, sallow
as a stack
of letters. Like you, they’d arrived flush
with poignant vows.
I’d set this carboard time capsule not
in a cornerstone —for we would never build— but
on a closet shelf. The wake had been
never
to touch them, burial, closing a door.
Sometimes I feel
as if I’m boxed in, too, with you, trapped
(in the past) like a mouse.
.
Souvenir (for Karen)
Brookwood Station
We trysted at Brookwood Station
where the Southern Crescent had dropped you
and grabbed you again and again
like the world or a twisted lover.
We sipped coffee, gossiped like hens,
and drove by the next blue pearl on my string
of rooms, my computer listing service of friends.
Piedmont Park
Then we stretched in a meadow,
firing terra cotta arms and legs,
reading grown-up nursery rhymes,
reciting how our lives had lathed our supple wood
into shape.
We plumbed deep, adored ourselves,
though we would never touch,
for what we longed to be— those seeds
inside us breaking ground into green.
You quoted purple cuttings
from your blond inamorato’s mail,
showed me a shot of his malleable happiness,
the baggy, white pants,
the taut hemp ropes of his tan.
You fluttered to fly. Your nest
atop St. Thomas scanned the sea.
The Rhinoceros Room
We clinked glasses (slumped in an alcove deep
in a bar) and listened to a singer croon—
I more than halfway to a star and you, your flight.
I felt the way an alien feels with the INS at the door.
Backstreet
We went downstairs to drink and dance
among the denizens and smoky plush.
I played the tour guide Virgil. You were Dante
making the rounds of the demimonde below.
Your Limo
At dawn, I gathered you and your colorful history
—like a backyard sale— and crammed my Bug
till bloated as a tick, the way we stuffed our visits full
of desires…your ripe bags and pregnant luggage,
your Brobdingnagian black portfolio round
with paper, brush, and paint, and last, my parting gift,
a stowaway, an aging, raucous radio.
I bundled you off
like a Red defector bound for life in the West.
Hartsfield Airport
Soon, the flock of passengers would sweep you up
and off. The Virgins waited for you, mate,
like naked natives, Siren boys, your love.
They called like all unconsummated dreams.
I turned away as I’ve turned
from other lovers who declined,
but you just stood there (sure my love was packed)
until I smiled and waved.
Then you strolled along the ramp
that led you home.
The Radio
At night, I think of you, my beautiful Gauguin, in bed
above the lavish palms, the twinkling city lights,
the harbor pinned with a moon. On a stand nearby,
the radio waits, laden with songs. You flip a switch.
The tuner pops with static, clears its throat.
The speaker gapes, and costumed islanders dance off the tip
of its tongue.
Since I’m not there, it will sing for me.
It will sing for you. Oh, what bright colors it paints!
.
Ken Anderson’s poetry books are The Intense Lover and Permanent Gardens. Recently, Coffin Bell Journal nominated his poem “Blood Quartet” for the 2024 Best of the Net anthology. He was finalist in the 2021 Saints and Sinners poetry contest. His novel Sea Change: An Example of the Pleasure Principle was finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award and an Independent Publisher Editor’s Choice. His novel Someone Bought the House on the Island was finalist in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. A stage adaptation won the Saints and Sinners Playwriting Contest and premiered May 2, 2008, at the Marigny Theater in New Orleans.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 