Peter Schireson’s writing has appeared in Quiddity, Hotel Amerika, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pleiades, among others. His chapbook, The Welter of Me & You, won the Coal Hill 2013 Chapbook Prize. He holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. ---------
It Has a Wish
It has a wish, she says.
When a skirt has a fold like this,
small and unintended in the hem, it means
it has a wish.
I bend over and straighten it,
trying to conceive what more,
beside brushing against her legs,
her pale green skirt,
sheathed about her, folded,
could be wishing for.
Once She Was
Once she was a kimono,
a hairpin, flowering fortune.
Now a wolf-dream,
she howls
lurching through the house, drenched
in my cologne.
Once our newborns slept
in her arms, smiling
about milk,
a bowl of dissheveled lilacs bedside.
Petals shed.
Hungering I’d do it again.