Chet’la Sebree is the author of Mistress, selected by Cathy Park Hong and forthcoming from New Issues Poetry and Prose in Fall 2019. She has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Stadler Center for Poetry. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Crazyhorse, and Guernica. Her website can be found here. ---------
The Lure
I can be seduced by globular street lamps
with floating flower baskets, a warm June
breezing bushes as high as first lip of roofline—
Victorian houses shaded by wax-shine leaves
begging please, fall in love with me.
Four-car freight trains sound horns for miles
as they wind through rural central wherever
against the shush of crops rattling together.
I’ve always wanted to write a poem like this
about the paper swish of lamb’s ear and
the substantive difference of petal leathers.
I’ve always wanted to feel safe anywhere, but
there’s chaos in the cloth writhing on the flagpole,
mosquitos feasting on the taut
skin of my feet, dark clouds rolling.
Every four by four grid just feels
like version of your grin, asking me to sit,
to have just one drink.