|
Vanessa Stauffer received a doctorate in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston and currently teaches in the creative writing program at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, Brilliant Corners, Copper Nickel, Crab Orchard Review, North American Review, among other journals.
PERIPHERY
The water whispered us closer
than we’d been, so we traded
sandals & the dirt path for bare
skin, a velvet swath of jewelweed
smithed in dew: tangles of stars
gathering the sunset, pearled skeins
between the limbs, a weave
of dusk & youth snaring our feet
until we quit the woods & gave
the salt of summer bodies
to the lake, the surface wind-lathed
vermilion, incised with the shapes
of pine & poplar. We fell between
the shadows & turned our mouths
to each other, bolder than
we thought we could be, shocked
& proud of ourselves, two children
who’d realized they could breathe
through one another. I remember
this because we grew up years
ago. I remember this because
I’ve been looking at A Girl Asleep.
She’s our age that summer, napping
behind a table draped with color:
crimson & russet, geometries
of indigo beneath a pitcher
lit like an eggshell, a bowl
of apples & plums before her.
I’m remembering how we’re taught
to think the future always bears
ripe fruit in its porcelain
embrace, how we have to forget
in order to taste it, how, today,
I’m tired of my own exhalations.
There’s a door half-open behind
her, empty of everything
but light. I can’t forget
the way we laughed. In twilight,
our shadows were giants.
|
