Four poems by Emma Aylor

Lucking

           after M. A. Vizsolyi

when I go to the small places of your lucking
legs I am porous am freckles like brown
sugar starred am the truthful moons
of your almond fingertips when holding
and in your bed we are tangling piles
of lentils cool in the cupboard this accordion
feeling pulling my shoulders outward it hooks
my belly onto the corner of an index card
to something I want be what I want be knees be
relief of a cold subway pole and warm palm
in August’s meeting be something out of the body
or nothing easy are you what I need when everything
is in a box under my bed you heard me when I cried
in the front seat and sang while I slept there

* 

Pathogenesis

Out at night I hold your gone like bone china between my knees,
cry in bed at half past two with the cork cigarette
mouthing. Low gong in the morning, bells stirred in broken jingles
through coffees. I never meant to write this many love
poems. Inscriptions To Véra, the after-glaze of someone
else’s mine. When I read that my throat’s hollow jellies and folds like kelp. 

*

Gypsy Cards

           after Stevens’ June 4, 1954 letter to Barbara Church

These are my incunabula, what Stevens lit
to a friend as tokens of your wandering,
some swaddles transparent as pale eyelids
where you can see the purple tubing root.
I will always try harder; this nursery. I would
coat these cinderblocks to the top of the stairwells
if I could show you the stupid size of this.
We circulate accidental, paint petaling
doorknobs in the art building, and when I walk home
I can never tell if it’s raining a little or just dripping
what’s old from the trees.

*

June Book

Woke to dried blueberries milking
from the dawn and thought of your feet, that same
softness. The trees here smell heavy
as South Carolina, our long bike ride
and after, geometries of sweetened sweat.

We walk in air our very temperature,
sometimes, there. I did it last night, moved for miles and lay
on most grass, read under streetlamps,
one poem per light. And on. I called and we
talked for 24 minutes. If I don’t think about it

I can go to bed. I need to want so much it puddles
my insides and toughens my skin.

More poetry at Used Furniture.

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