Lucy Anderton - Poetry

Monday Nov 25

On Hiatus

Lucy Anderton lives in a 500-year-old brothel at the level of the tree tops. Her poems have appeared in, among others, Beloit Poetry Journal, FENCE, Crazyhorse, The Iowa Review, and Verse Daily. If you would like to read more of her work, her latest chapbook, the flung you, can be found at New Michigan Press.

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What of Your Red Fingers

1.

When you checked out

That frozen day and burned

Your furniture in the lot

Behind your house,

I started to see

Rose ribbons edging

Up doorposts, scarlet

Blazing from the mouths of cars,

Our sparkling world

Slapped in blood and burn,

Your gray eyes—

Unkind, really: blades.

2.

Punching a star

is no more

dangerous then pressing

fingers into the heart

of a young enough

girl. Your heart

is a brilliant fist

of fire, shimmering

in a cage of breath—

copper hot.

3.

Did it start with the blood

Every month in the hive—or

Was that their ghost? We did

Brush the wishbone between crook

Of eye—feathered back of knee— sweat,

I’ve seen it: The beads on your wrist. I missed—

I missed the bees in your cheek.

4.

What is it like to melt.

5.

This is the part

that no one will understand:

But did I? Yes, I entered

your circle of hair, the knots

at the bed posts—we slept in

the wood store, threw shoes

and diaphanous scarves in

Spain: I have questions!

It must have been hard to fit your body into the mouth of every day:

Into that red bulb of morning with its blooming lips of sun.

Your legs would run. Run!

Through miles in a darkness I would not

walk through.

6.

There is a splendid rage

to a forest fire.

Objective, indifferent

to the gentle hips

of rabbits. Bone

crisps dazzle

up in the royal

arms of smoke

plumes. The hysterical

Opera of atoms

chanting everything

is equal when it is charred.

Your arms spread

out—the shot

of wind— your

cindered stare

lands black—this

is the lonely

of silt finger

tips—now where,

where is the lifting?

The sinister juice

has bitten thoughtfully

into the bones. Moss—

that, too, blushes

up the bouquet

of roots. The hem

of your modest dress

unnerves me. It is the diamond

demon in me—you are

no longer sweet and straight

in some plastic

seat but now on

your knees, a fist

of hair shaking

from the top

of your head—how

still you are untouched

in that seat. These ill

moments—this slim

frozen breath. A knife

in the countryside.

A rip in the silk.

The spit has not run

off my face, nor

the blood closed

its gate, nor has my pretty

fate been unmangled.

So much of a rubber

crushed ball was I.

So easy to cut,

to separate.