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"Then I realized I had been murdered. / They looked for me in cafes, cemeteries, and churches / …. but they did not find me. / They never found me? / No. They never found me."
-Lorca, "The Fable and Round of the Three Friends"

I dreamt that I died in green,
on a midnight hill slab
where the grass was speaking

in the hungry language
of new summer:
"Your headstone is but a tooth

gritted in my lawn jaw
gnashing the June fog
while wind slouches

into the crutched arms
of the evening maple wash.
Who will find you here,

your tongue throwing poems
clotted with moss and mood?"
I woke to a jousting shadow

charging up the wall
& the toddling pink sun
lathe spun to brighter pool.

The dream of death
hung from my ear,
whispering of green.
Evan Stephens May 19
Join me, in this tumbledown
brick palazzo ruled by the bones
of a queen singing and swearing
that we'll never walk alone.

We can read in the oak pocket,
order ale from the cellars,
watch as the hanged man
steams with oily nostalgia,

well-waxed stories blossoming
& shrugging from his trolley tongue,
tales of silver-roaded loves he's had,
back in a lawless youth.

Love is a game you can't win,
insists the hanged man,
but if you're oh so careful
you can lose very slowly.
  May 13 Evan Stephens
Gabrielle
When I’m in the dark
All I want is him,

Blurred silhouette warm to the touch,
Skin to skin in the dim.

When the contours in the corners loom,
Hold me without sight.

In the dark, and nothing else,
We are one shadow, slight.

When the lights come on,
Unfortunate details grow.

Like a **** from a crack,
A blemish in the snow.

In the savage of the day,
The barriers of our skin discrete,

We just can’t make sense,
When light and eyes meet.
This poem is about wanting to be with someone who isn't right for you.
Evan Stephens May 12
The nightingales are sobbing in
The orchards of our mothers,
And hearts that we broke long ago
Have long been breaking others

-W. H. Auden

At 6 am there was thunder
loud enough to wake me and the cats
rain toe-tapping on the pane
calling us to the theater:

"Come look at us, heavy clouds
of dark morning: spray-headed,
sunrises in our throat.
Enjoy our Sunday eyes"

I did. The paper people
at the bus stop huddled
& dissolved under wet slants.
The crust of horizon broke away

into thick puff-parcels, and
beneath it all the water flung
itself against the scory stone
before escaping down the drain cape.

"Come look at us, the wet-nurses:
our hands on the doll-face petals,
the walls of leaves. We evaporate
into the sea engine, purring with life."
To the mothers we were given, and to the mothers we made.
Raw rain and petrichor,
gathering in the cuffs and corners
of the nightwalk - I miss her,

the blonde from group therapy
however many years ago, L-----,
whose upper case traumas

mirrored mine across that beige couch
& the waiting room sand garden.
Hard hide years, those,

but as far as I know she did OK.
Me, I tried in desperation to marry
someone who simply didn't run,

but you can imagine how that went.
I remember seeing L----- on a Wednesday
morning, her voice a lace surprise

at seeing me, greening grass wings
spread before us on Farragut's diagonal,
her black shoe arch pressing the world

firmly away from her. She rafted away,
as almost everyone does in a life:
the sun called in sick, the moon

maw yawned and yawed, the sea
throbbed into the stones. New rain
on my face - just rain, just rain, just rain...
I started this series with really high ambitions, but basically nothing has gone the way I had hoped or according to plan... so I am basically just going to revert to my normal style and write things loosely related to the card in question. No more wild tour of every poetic style in the book, apologies! I kept finding that the meter and rhyme schemes were getting in my way and no amount of creative corner cutting could restore the meaning that got lost.
Curious things emerge
from this last cup of gin.
Maybe I've been too alone
with the rain and with drink
because strangers converge
into thumb-smudged skins
washing over smoothed stone
into the storm's glottal rink...
I'll stop there and stem
these mannequin thoughts
seeded by a dollar's solitude,
watered by a fallen hem
of night. Thunder's brought
a brand new mood...
modified Italian sonnet: ABCD ABCD EFG EFG
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