Heather Bartlett - Poetry

Friday Nov 22

On Hiatus

Heather Bartlett received her MFA in poetry from Hunter College. Her work can be found in, among other places, Conte, The Evening Street Review, Real Poetik, Melusine, The Nervous Breakdown, Third Wednesday, and Phoebe. She is assistant editor at Split Oak Press and teaches writing at SUNY Cortland and Ithaca College. She writes, grades papers, and longs for New York City from her small apartment in Ithaca, New York.

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Go Like This

“And I want it still for me here now as I lie in the blue-black of this aloneness thirsting for love more than I ever thought I could.”

—Lorrie Moore

Let the word roll over

in your mouth: danger.

It feels like

memorizing lines of numbers

or verse, like falling into white heat, like

biting your lip. She wants you

to ask a question, no. She wants

an answer. Like this:

the clouds tonight are mercury-quilted

and wrapping us in warm rain.

She tells you she likes the idea of something

to believe in. She has a way

of reaching around you

so all night you will be searching

for more of that scent. Leave your own

buried in her shoulder.

Write a letter

that’s only for you. Start

like this: I no longer believe

in black and white.

Carry it with you

in the blue-black dark. But here

is the dangerous part:

the leaves have covered the sidewalk

and now this way looks the same as the sky.

You want to go find her again –

Wait. Go like this: find new ways

to say you want this pain.

Like this: falling is not the only way

to break open.

Morningsong

What was it that kept us

before all this giving up:

the color of the room

when the sky is about to turn to storm

or early morning

& my fingers cannot trace your form

in the dark

when the kettle no longer whistles

& the boiling water

splinters the thin glass

when I open the door

& the light from the porch is enough

to show the deliberate & empty space

our bodies have given up

while the morning breaks & you

are not yet awake to your own darkness.