The Page
I use what I can of the page, long winded on cool summer nights,
and short of breath most days.
They hold court over me, spirit solid and stout, I dance in the rain like lovers on the television shows.
I alone,
but with memories, with goodbyes and soft wanting laid to rest beside the days gone by.
There’s a heart beating crispness, for coolness, for the fingers of faith to glide along the bone. There’s that longing for something to take hold, to pull up—
Too long I’ve seen the sky from here,
the earth turned over into loose soil behind me, beckoning me to stop and grow, to plant and settle, to bring forward what I can’t control—
to bring it forward and do what?
Take hands, take worlds away, the love of a single woman against the debt of ages, lifetimes, crawling turned to scavenging, and what of love, what of nothing else.
It takes years to see the body of a woman.
Half remembered fantasies blurred by a dense moment,
unclear and foggy like evening; in the valley of monsters she walks alone down the road, center lane,
one foot before the other, her staccato beauty made prescient by the lofted clouds, the dank recurrence of passing traffic just ahead, crossing the street beyond us,
while we’re walking toward the end. It’s right there. The long of her clavicle, the slice of her hip, the pull of her cotton and twist to her curve—
unsteadies me,
leaves me leaning, like a dream slowly fading as I’m slowly waking—
look back to clasp nothing, long song finally reaching its final chorus, longer movie still not into its last reel—yet
everyone is dying, the lovers and winners, the long shot boy from the
beginning, he’s still there.
He’s still me.
November, Late Evening
Here, they misunderstand the blowing wind,the growing breeze
as it kicks up dry air; the great whistling, howling at times,
like a distant beast
drawing near,
fangs and seething hot, and then silence again.
Reprieve, the residents think.
The calm. A cool space between buildings,
a last kiss in suburbia, on the hills, a dozen lovers flock to watch the ocean
crash in blackness on the shore—
somewhere we covet darkness,
curl to the branch, hum inside the hollow,
yet those drawn to the window screen as the storm bears down
are first to shout down the hall:
the rain’s very nearly here.
Even as the door is flung wide, the air rippling with energy expanding—
Most of all we think of home. Distance in miles over hours,
lastly we think of honesty,
sex, the last roaming hand, broken hearts;
how many marks did last, and how many will wash—
as she says,
the rain’s very nearly here.
Douglas now resides in Los Angeles after years exploring the Eastern coast. He prefers not to be in one state for too long, and maintains a keen respect for accuracy of statement. His work has appeared in Crime Factory Magazine, The Shine Journal, and Vagabondage Press, and Sleet Magazine. He can be found on Twitter: @DougSulli, where he rambles about the writer life.