Joseph A. W. Quintela

Departure Ghazal
 
My train comes late, I will be late, of late I abide in shadow
the sun crouched low when you come at last and drape my side in shadow
 
The steel doors close, my dry lips close, one train draws close to another
I once asked how you would part our house and you replied, In shadow
 
The ride is long, the hush strung long, I long for the smells that bound us
the mumbling stews that spoke for two, and the basil dried in shadow
 
The car is full, the moon is full, a full man paints his cheeks in drag
beside me, the dark pane frames four eyes, our blush applied in shadow
 
Into the land, the flash of land, a stray glance lands the seed to cleave
us, the strange impulse to cultivate, to coincide in shadow
 
 
 
 
Joseph A. W. Quintela writes. Poems. Stories. On Post-its. Walls. Envelopes. Cocktail napkins. Twitter. Anything he gets his hands on, really. His last chapbook, This is not Poetry. #poetry, was published by The Red Ceilings Press. Other work has appeared in The Collagist, ABJECTIVE, GUD, Bartleby Snopes, and Existere. As the senior editor at Deadly Chaps Press, he publishes both an annual series of chapbooks and the weekly eReview, Short, Fast, and Deadly. His work at Sarah Lawrence College revolves around integrating the disparate yet rapidly dovetailing fields of Conceptual Poetry and Eco-Criticism. As such, he is an acolyte of intra-action, hash tags, and the Oxford comma. (www.josephquintela.com)
 
 
 
 
Return to January 2012 Edition