Gale Marie Thompson
CONFECTION
This poem is only one way of behaving.
Mine is already unlearning the bed,
broken away from responding
with something more than moveable parts,
a late night quickening of memory.
Passing under the ceiling as if there were
some sense of territory here. I bump up
against your paper and outside the mildness
breaks the sky open. When I get weary,
and I do get weary, you start, only for me
to come to, miles away, Cinnabon in hand,
choice of dense fog and poison in me, my gut.
We are far from two horses facing opposite
directions in the dust. We are of very few
alphabets in this green coolness. Is it heroic
to wish for interference in the light, when
that is the only time we can see it.
In my heavy blouse whole parts of me
are turning into red dust and piling
on your headstones. These old buildings
are a screen. I want to use this box
to construct my memory of you, not deposit.