January 16, 2024
your face in the evening schools of longing
--Audre
Lorde
These are not
“mornings of
wish and ripen.”
I wake to dishes
undone. How to say
torpor, gray, try
in one thousand ways?
You are still
upstairs in
imagination
your mind rowing
along the shore of to-do,
checking the trotlines
of here, now
Three hundred sixty-five
days you are gone:
Awe-filled, common
How the world
goes without
answer, its terrible
movement
Notes:
After Jean Valentine
When
we were first together,
over
1,000 miles apart,
you
counted our emails—
356
if I remember right
That
was before our smoking
deck
in the happy house,
the
pelicans in parliament
beyond
the lagoon
I
find your notes in green
and
orange marker
willy-nilly
in drawers,
books,
ghostly traces
on
your pants you used
like
a page.
It’s the grave where I find you
Lea Graham is a writer, editor, critic and translator who lives
in Hyde Park, New York. She is the author of two poetry collections, From
the Hotel Vernon (Salmon Press, 2019) and Hough & Helix & Where &
Here & You, You, You (No
Tell Books, 2011), a fine press book and
three chapbooks. Recently, she edited the anthology of critical
essays: From the Word to the Place: The Work of Michael Anania (MadHat
Press, 2022).