Midheaven
The midheaven light shows the
breathlessness of you, wringing back
all into the folded palms
hiding your eyes;
molten, alive, and making tears.
Passionate man
with face turned down,
eyes on boots and broken earth
there are highways of clay
and cold leaves all around you,
the same threads eventually find the throat.
From the same windward hollow
as the bark and the moss of this perigee
searching out the lines of eyelight
Beating softly as a blackbird's wings.
Draw my name in the bathroom mirror
when you shower tonight
and I am there,
an eventual steam reaching into
your precious lungs
where I long to reside
again.
© 2022 Mende Smith
Bio: Mende Smith the author of two collections of poetry Hollywoodland (Noble Swine) and Veritas Cabaret (Lummox Press); more than thirty additional pieces have been featured in the anthology, small press projects, and Lit Zines (poem and prose form), as well as a number of essays, feature magazine articles, and interviews. Smith’s poems have been performed or received public readings in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, and her 2012 online radio venue “Writing on Demand” was a smash hit on satellite radio. In 2014, in Los Angeles, Smith founded “The Writers Round Talk Show” at one of LA’s oldest venues, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center. Smith studied poetics and journalism in pursuit of her writing career. She works as an editor for a variety of works for small presses and is also active as a script editor for Find Art Films.
Beautiful. Thank you Mende.
ReplyDelete