It’s a tender gap, a handclap

"Golden Orb Weaver" collage by Tiffany Dugan

by Ashleigh A. Allen

Starting next week, we pray loud
in the direction of memory.
Face forest like a flag, mount the lions.
Your insides hairy and damp as concrete.
Sundays full of worry and worms, socks
hour the clocks full of snow, the doorway
is deliberate. In the garden, flattening
the lawn. Your song comes to me eyes
first, lands on warm lashes, saliva
across a naked face, you look up, ask for sky
but all you get is god, then men come down,
sarcastic pieces of the same roof.
Women bring cosmic lift, the edges
position the finch song at the beginning,
with xylophonic scale we scam
ourselves. Creases on the cheek and bark
on the maple. We check the inventory
on purrs, supreme falls. Uptown you
fold a flower into the cuff of your shirt,
one minute you sigh over a map and the
next you drag your finger across
the table for loose sugar. On schedule.
I see you as new, each time
a familiar sneeze, innocence recedes
into hair until all that’s left is train
tracked. There is Kandinsky and
a compulsory bullfight. A gold toilet
one floor up from where a woman tells her
lover, “don’t come find me.” The afternoon
turns into an overture with olives. The gale
at your back moves us to Christmas.

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