Melissa Crowe
Epithalamium with Inventory
I had a moon—did you?—and a sky
to keep it in and a forest wide as night
and winking with eyes. I had mornings—
did you have mornings?—and a sun
to sweeten them and on a wire
out the window oil-purple crows,
their dry throats cracking me awake.
I had a bus with a driver named Charlie,
torn green seats and a kinder-racket
to convey me toward the day.
I had a town through dirty glass—
and you?—drugstore, post office, a river
wrinkled with light. Sudden school,
its hot top and jungle gym, knees bleeding
through tights, bloody tights, yes,
and an ache to go home but the bell rang,
I had a bell, a bright rough music in air,
in my chest. I had a chest, you had a chest—
I know it—with fist inside, clenching.
Did you have a blackboard and a woman’s
hand, bone-white chalk drawing a world
then erasing, drawing and erasing,
palimpsest of ghost-worlds without cease?
I had lined paper and a fat blue pencil,
dominant hand and an edict not
to use it, clumsy otherhand they said
I should. I did. I had a name I wrote
backward—and you? You had a name,
but I couldn’t call it, and a hand, two hands
I’d not yet held. We each had a house key,
didn’t we, empty apartment and afternoons
yawning like holes, and I had a neighbor
hard in his ways like the pit I mistook
for a mine and slid into, each of its gems
just a lump of dull earth. I climbed out.
You climbed out. Did I have a mother?
If I had a mother, you did, too, and fathers?
We must have had them, yes, teachers
and fathers, buses and moons. Days
like smoke or like cool ether we breathed
and breathed through, and what do I have
now? O moon, o day, window, river,
blood, o bird, o hand, o fist, o world—
you. And will you have me, too?
Melissa Crowe is the author of Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019), and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Adroit Journal, Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, POETRY, and Tupelo Quarterly. She’s editor of Beloit Poetry Journal and coordinator of the MFA program at UNCW, where she teaches courses in poetry and publishing.
Return to July 2020 Edition
I had a moon—did you?—and a sky
to keep it in and a forest wide as night
and winking with eyes. I had mornings—
did you have mornings?—and a sun
to sweeten them and on a wire
out the window oil-purple crows,
their dry throats cracking me awake.
I had a bus with a driver named Charlie,
torn green seats and a kinder-racket
to convey me toward the day.
I had a town through dirty glass—
and you?—drugstore, post office, a river
wrinkled with light. Sudden school,
its hot top and jungle gym, knees bleeding
through tights, bloody tights, yes,
and an ache to go home but the bell rang,
I had a bell, a bright rough music in air,
in my chest. I had a chest, you had a chest—
I know it—with fist inside, clenching.
Did you have a blackboard and a woman’s
hand, bone-white chalk drawing a world
then erasing, drawing and erasing,
palimpsest of ghost-worlds without cease?
I had lined paper and a fat blue pencil,
dominant hand and an edict not
to use it, clumsy otherhand they said
I should. I did. I had a name I wrote
backward—and you? You had a name,
but I couldn’t call it, and a hand, two hands
I’d not yet held. We each had a house key,
didn’t we, empty apartment and afternoons
yawning like holes, and I had a neighbor
hard in his ways like the pit I mistook
for a mine and slid into, each of its gems
just a lump of dull earth. I climbed out.
You climbed out. Did I have a mother?
If I had a mother, you did, too, and fathers?
We must have had them, yes, teachers
and fathers, buses and moons. Days
like smoke or like cool ether we breathed
and breathed through, and what do I have
now? O moon, o day, window, river,
blood, o bird, o hand, o fist, o world—
you. And will you have me, too?
Melissa Crowe is the author of Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019), and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Adroit Journal, Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, POETRY, and Tupelo Quarterly. She’s editor of Beloit Poetry Journal and coordinator of the MFA program at UNCW, where she teaches courses in poetry and publishing.
Return to July 2020 Edition