Livia Meneghin
​

For Alison, After a Walk
            --after Frank O’Hara
 
           I can’t always express what I’m feeling.
Yesterday, in the late-fall air while I was
complaining about a complicated someone who
let go
          of me, it was love for you that kept
my feet on the ground, kept the evening
light incident on our skin,
                                      and isn’t it odd?
that on paths past empty gardens and rusty
fences,
           my most tender feelings rumble
                                                           and bud
like wildflowers. Look down at your hand—​
isn’t there another suddenly there too, offering
an orange?
                and you love the person it belongs to
saying, wouldn’t you like
                                   for me to peel
back the rind?
                  When the fruit is opened,
albedo remains under a fingernail, the scent
holding.




Livia Meneghin is the author of Honey in My Hair and a Review Writer for GASHER. Her writing has found homes in The Academy of American Poets, BOAAT Journal, Entropy Magazine, Tinderbox, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA at Emerson, where she is now affiliated faculty and Program Coordinator for EmersonWRITES.




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