Look closely
enough
and signs of wear
reveal themselves.
In the corner of a photograph
of a grocery store bouquet
peeking out from behind the pale
purple aster, under the alstroemeria the bodice
of a gown—drag yourself
wearily into watercolor, a sheer skirt for when
assurance blesses another passage—blossoms
through
for everyone says you’re done.
The opening
strains of a bridal march or a beat
for what you won’t drop. You’ve been
drawn out like the scent of chrysanthemums
in your bedroom
for all the world wants
to see you barely bear.
a seem allowance; threading custom gowns a garden furnishes bespoke futures, from wilt a jewel. Ah!—
gray hair silvering thinning edges like spider silk in sunlight, first frost on the ground and in the hatchback spiderwort, coneflower, yarrow, strawberries yet to plant. October gets away with sonnets in the tub. Love poems. No less. Embellishing: whatever mourning brings, I bought.
The farm: of my dreams, what ought to have been is. Another day— of steam,
salt, stem, stim, him…?
A hem.
Sometimes the wind stays low, silvering, bluing the green grass in a shiver, rain practicing an offbeat rhythm on the metal trashcan outside the French doors. Sometimes high wind rustles the trees to beckoning whisper and sway. Visible suddenly in the tall grass the heads of three turkeys. Then
they’re leaping, suddenly chattering, flaring their wings. Tap, fan, caress everything is touching. Gray mist tiptoes across the gravel driveway. Cold air brushes my knuckles as I slouch in the nubbly upholstered chair. Oh, I…Oh, I… I miss you: a clench in my jaw. My molars touch, grind grief, ache. Nothing stops. Shades of green roll out for miles before my eyes. These hills God’s I love you to me—no one, no one’s gift—to anyone. When the rain stops, I’ll finish staking a deer fence around the vegetable garden.
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is the author of Open Interval, a 2009 finalist for the National Book Award and the LA Times Book Prize, and Black Swan, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, as well as the chapbooks Leading with a Naked Body with Leela Chantrelle and Poems in Conversation and a Conversation with Elizabeth Alexander. She has been awarded fellowships from Cave Canem, the Lannan Foundation, and Civitella Ranieri. She has written plays and lyrics for The Cherry, an Ithaca arts collective, and in 2018, her work was featured in Courage Everywhere, celebrating women’s suffrage and the fight for political equality, at National Theatre London.
Image stills from The Reckless Moment, a 1949 American film directed by Max Ophüls and starring James Mason and Joan Bennett. The film is based on The Blank Wall (1947), a novel written by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.
