Lee Slonimsky
Yellow Leaf
Leaves talk
in the sounds they make
as they rasp along the ground,
breeze-scurried,
crackly.
Suddenly you whirl
as if your ex
might have just whispered
plaintively to you:
A bold leaf gusts onto your pants, mid-calf;
you kick it off.
You really are alone now.
It breaks up into blur
of yellow across October,
not making a sound.
Talk then is of silence, chilly western wind.
Lee Slonimsky’s work has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Connecticut Review, Measure, The New York Times, New Ohio Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry Daily, 32 Poems, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, and has received seven Pushcart Prize nominations. His fourth collection of poems, Logician of the Wind, with cover comments from the poets Rachel Hadas and A. E. Stallings, was published in 2012 by Orchises Press. And Lee is the co-author, along with his wife, Hammett Prize winning mystery writer Carol Goodman, of the Black Swan Rising trilogy (Tor Books). The final installment, The Shape Stealer, will appear in 2013.
Return to May 2013 Edition
Leaves talk
in the sounds they make
as they rasp along the ground,
breeze-scurried,
crackly.
Suddenly you whirl
as if your ex
might have just whispered
plaintively to you:
A bold leaf gusts onto your pants, mid-calf;
you kick it off.
You really are alone now.
It breaks up into blur
of yellow across October,
not making a sound.
Talk then is of silence, chilly western wind.
Lee Slonimsky’s work has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Connecticut Review, Measure, The New York Times, New Ohio Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry Daily, 32 Poems, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, and has received seven Pushcart Prize nominations. His fourth collection of poems, Logician of the Wind, with cover comments from the poets Rachel Hadas and A. E. Stallings, was published in 2012 by Orchises Press. And Lee is the co-author, along with his wife, Hammett Prize winning mystery writer Carol Goodman, of the Black Swan Rising trilogy (Tor Books). The final installment, The Shape Stealer, will appear in 2013.
Return to May 2013 Edition