Tart Honey

Burnham

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781532644825
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

These poems explore the experience of a long marriage, and a decade of living at a distance. They ask how this love began, and how it might end.

IV

A Shirt, a Shroud

Since we can still call each other “love”

I’m asking you to watch the knife-edge

of dawn over the slow river

sky slit by rose or gray as it has been

each day, enough like the day before

though some day will be the last

this knowledge hovering like a hand

the touch exploring the cool margins

of a time we will not have, the touch

that takes me to the comfortable

half-beat of time propped on the edge

of sleep, that moment when I feel

a hand, light on my chest, and wonder

if it is mine or yours

Parts and Wholes

1.

When she was little, we’d do jigsaws, guessing

what the pieces were, sometimes saying “flower”

for a clown-face, but soon she understood:

each piece had its locked-in place.

I’d put her firmly in her bed, held in

by monkey, bear, and doll, each object

in its place, limbs, paws, and tails curving

softly around each other.

2.

Old couples stay together touching edges,

pieces wearing down, but only as their

counterparts are worn, still fitting gently

next to one another, soft and blurred,

but practiced, sure.

The Body of the Water

Each wave was long, a muscle rising

on the back of some thoughtful animal,

one I’d like to stroke but dared not

breach the shadow of his awful strength.

Each wave spread its smooth strong tube across

the sand, then opened like a scroll with secrets

inked on the hidden page—perhaps the moment

that we’ll touch each other for the last time—

then splitting, thick foam unraveling across

its sudden length, a steady white against

the blue that pales from cobalt to thin aqua

then darkens as another wave arises,

unrolls so high it casts a shadow back

behind itself. I know it shades the cobalt

almost purple; I know your every touch

can change my flesh, warm, calm, as waters

alter, magnify each other.

Useful

(after Catullus, Poem 7)

The snarky Roman...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• I: The Rich Salt of Your Skin
• II: We’d Wake Early and Eat Apples
• III: Shadows Waver Between Your Shape and Mine
• IV: A Shirt, a Shroud