Poetry by Antonia Clark
previously published in Lily -- Volume 4, Issue 7, June 2007 |
Antonia Clark is a medical writer by day and works for a medical software company in Burlington, Vermont. She's taught short fiction and poetry writing and is co-administrator of an online poetry forum, The Waters. Recent poems have appeared in kaleidowhirl, Light Quarterly, Loch Raven Review, Lucid Rhythms, The Pedestal Magazine, The Orange Room Review, Rattle, Stirring, and elsewhere. She loves French travel, food, and wine, and plays French café usic on a sparkly purple accordion.
MP3
We're in the Room
It always starts with dishes. She's drying,
he's picking his teeth. In the kitchen
window, the sky's still dark purple,
going black fast, and a yellow bulb appears
and disappears in the glass, if we sway
forward and back on our toes. He presses
her, she shivers into stone. He turns
his naked back to everyone. She sings,
faltering, hums what she doesn't dare
to say, but we all know the words:
You'll be sorry, someday. We're in
and out of the room, filling our lungs
with air as if it's the deep end of the pool.
If the moment breaks open, we'll ask
to chase fireflies, run through wet grass
barefoot, as if it's all we ever wanted.
Moths thrum the screen door, the room
rattles like an empty gourd. She throws
down her towel. Then take them. She spits
the words like seeds she wasn't expecting
to find in her mouth. We're caught
in the doorway, we're in, then we're out.
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MP3
Navigator
It falls to me, a woman with no sense
of direction, to trace the route,
call out the turns and junctions, finger
on the map, eyes watering in wind.
We hoopskirt the cities, aim for wayside
towns -- every gulch, gore, gully.
Your eyes swerve to my bare foot
on the hot dash tapping out a signal:
take us down a dusty track, into the high
grass, yield to the lazy buzzing heat.
You take me, make me your compass,
even though you know I'm winging it.
Maps, worn at the creases, tear apart
in my hands, flap from the window like birds. |
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