Kyle Dacuyan
On Your Metropolitan Premiere
Mezzo, you knew all the notes long before
you ever heard them. Prima e ultima, only
woman in my skein of lovers—on this, the occasion
of your debut as Mozart's xenial Cherubino,
I enclose a yellowed photograph, late August, Ocracoke.
You, reclining on a divan: Odalisque with Magnolia.
Look how we followed Matisse to a T―
your languid pose, the oranges,
your mother's flowered crewelwork. How frivolous
my vision. How tremulous I was
drawing later to your breasts, finger to your vulva
as upon a viol's fret. Forgive me the music
I wished to make through you of myself.
I wanted artifice to make real and better my desire.
I wanted the alien, human sound to be honest
in my mouth―love, a vocable I believed in,
though always in a tongue I did not know,
always overheard as you sang to yourself
in some other corner of the house.
Kyle Dacuyan completed his MFA in Poetry at Emerson College, where he received an Academy of American Poets Prize and served as the Poetry Editor of Redivider. He has been a semi-finalist for the “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize and has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Davidson Institute. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, The Nashville Review, DIALOGIST, RHINO, and The Volta, among other places.
Return to July 2015 Edition
Mezzo, you knew all the notes long before
you ever heard them. Prima e ultima, only
woman in my skein of lovers—on this, the occasion
of your debut as Mozart's xenial Cherubino,
I enclose a yellowed photograph, late August, Ocracoke.
You, reclining on a divan: Odalisque with Magnolia.
Look how we followed Matisse to a T―
your languid pose, the oranges,
your mother's flowered crewelwork. How frivolous
my vision. How tremulous I was
drawing later to your breasts, finger to your vulva
as upon a viol's fret. Forgive me the music
I wished to make through you of myself.
I wanted artifice to make real and better my desire.
I wanted the alien, human sound to be honest
in my mouth―love, a vocable I believed in,
though always in a tongue I did not know,
always overheard as you sang to yourself
in some other corner of the house.
Kyle Dacuyan completed his MFA in Poetry at Emerson College, where he received an Academy of American Poets Prize and served as the Poetry Editor of Redivider. He has been a semi-finalist for the “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize and has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Davidson Institute. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, The Nashville Review, DIALOGIST, RHINO, and The Volta, among other places.
Return to July 2015 Edition