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Study for Infatuation by Michael T. Young

April 1, 2012 Contributed By: Michael T. Young

Sometimes the blue sky threatens,
the lilac conceals some danger.
But it passes like a cougar
stalking among the boulders
and deciding mysteriously
to move on.  You don’t know,
but something you did
or didn’t do, saved your life.
And what might have happened
had you turned your back
on this sunset, this rotting
fence post, this dandelion
dripping its yellow
into the cracks along the gutter?
Something seamlessly escapes
and you can’t follow.  Sealed away
in the loam and marrow, its tracks
evaporate like water and like water,
when again it dashes a flirtatious spindrift
before you, it will mass, a cloud over trees
seeming fresh with such an allure
shading the street, an enticement
of flight and melody, it will play
in the mind like an etude, strength
to endure the long, beautiful devouring.

Return to table of contents for Issue 5 Spring 2012

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: April 1, 2012

Further Reading

When He
by Remi Recchia

  When he takes the other woman to bed, does he think of his wife? Her goodness trailing soot, eyes   ringed and fringed in black? She stays up all night, clips coupons from old letters, unlicks the envelopes.   They are weathered and damp. A waste of postage. Shoes untie themselves in his absence. […]

I
by Roger Lindo, translated from the Spanish by Matthew Byrne

Pero yo ya no soy yo …   [But I am not myself anymore …]   – Federico García Lorca,   Romance sonámbulo    Sometimes I dream I’m waist-deep in a sea of dwarf water lettuce  other times, I’m traveling interminably on the highway and my countenance is reflected   in the green reflections of what I did     […]

Velvet Rodeo by Kelly McQuain
(reviewed by Marc Frazier)

VELVET RODEO by Kelly McQuain Bloom Books (March 2014) 42 pages reviewed by Marc Frazier This collection takes us on a journey back to our roots as individuals largely shaped by family. There are siblings here, parents, even a step-grandfather. Though the poet is gay, he is not slavishly bound to writing strictly from that […]

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