Geffrey Davis
Write the Memory of the Girl Dancing in Apple Blossoms
―for N
Tell how, in the orchard’s middle, the petals just rained
down as she danced around the trunk of the tree.
Describe her arms,
raised into the Y of worship or request.
Although you knew better,
it looked as if she held up the sky,
as if she’d conjured the tree
and its sudden shedding of pink-white blossoms. Then
you noticed the father
in the branches above, smiling.
Remember how uncertain you became―if he knew
the miracle he was making,
if he could feel her arms suspend him there.
Could You Forgive My Clumsiness
For weeks now I have felt it coming: this ex-
lovers poem. But I’ve not yet learned
how to make clean, unequivocal room
in my poems, to offer an evenhanded display
of my inconstant heart. The guest-list alone
unsettles me. Sure, I could fall back
on the anonymity of initials or introduce each
by taste and touch: the sharp wine
of the body-rose, the necessary heft of an arm
in dead sleep. But how to explain that S gave more
than her medium blue toothbrush or curse words
set against the Colorado cold? And R met me
everywhere that rain fell―: the covered bridge,
the stone steps of the library:―and we held a sunrise
in her painted fingertips. I get confused.
And what about those with whom I made
a less messy love? I could shove gesture after
subtle gesture into these lines―all those electric
nibbles and sudden tendernesses in the night―
and still fail to get it right. Ah, hell, perhaps
my usual recklessness is all that will ever do.
So, Dear Eastern Lights, Dear Unending Distances:
pardon the clutter, claim your place (I assure you,
it’s here)―please, sit with me for a while.
Forgive my clumsiness once more and
accept my I will love you still before this closes
and, somehow, I let you go, all over again―
Geffrey Davis's debut collection of poems, Revising the Storm, has been awarded the 2013 A. Poulin Poetry Prize and will be published by BOA Editions in April 2014. A Cave Canem Fellow, he has also received the 2013 Dogwood Prize in Poetry, the 2012 Wabash Prize for Poetry, and the 2012 Leonard Steinberg Memorial/Academy of American Poets Prize. Poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in a variety of journals, including Crazyhorse, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, New Madrid,Nimrod International Journal, and Sycamore Review. He considers the Puget Sound area “home”—though he has been raised by much more of the Pacific Northwest, and now by Pennsylvania as well. Visit his website: www.geffreydavis.com
Return to November 2013 Edition
―for N
Tell how, in the orchard’s middle, the petals just rained
down as she danced around the trunk of the tree.
Describe her arms,
raised into the Y of worship or request.
Although you knew better,
it looked as if she held up the sky,
as if she’d conjured the tree
and its sudden shedding of pink-white blossoms. Then
you noticed the father
in the branches above, smiling.
Remember how uncertain you became―if he knew
the miracle he was making,
if he could feel her arms suspend him there.
Could You Forgive My Clumsiness
For weeks now I have felt it coming: this ex-
lovers poem. But I’ve not yet learned
how to make clean, unequivocal room
in my poems, to offer an evenhanded display
of my inconstant heart. The guest-list alone
unsettles me. Sure, I could fall back
on the anonymity of initials or introduce each
by taste and touch: the sharp wine
of the body-rose, the necessary heft of an arm
in dead sleep. But how to explain that S gave more
than her medium blue toothbrush or curse words
set against the Colorado cold? And R met me
everywhere that rain fell―: the covered bridge,
the stone steps of the library:―and we held a sunrise
in her painted fingertips. I get confused.
And what about those with whom I made
a less messy love? I could shove gesture after
subtle gesture into these lines―all those electric
nibbles and sudden tendernesses in the night―
and still fail to get it right. Ah, hell, perhaps
my usual recklessness is all that will ever do.
So, Dear Eastern Lights, Dear Unending Distances:
pardon the clutter, claim your place (I assure you,
it’s here)―please, sit with me for a while.
Forgive my clumsiness once more and
accept my I will love you still before this closes
and, somehow, I let you go, all over again―
Geffrey Davis's debut collection of poems, Revising the Storm, has been awarded the 2013 A. Poulin Poetry Prize and will be published by BOA Editions in April 2014. A Cave Canem Fellow, he has also received the 2013 Dogwood Prize in Poetry, the 2012 Wabash Prize for Poetry, and the 2012 Leonard Steinberg Memorial/Academy of American Poets Prize. Poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in a variety of journals, including Crazyhorse, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, New Madrid,Nimrod International Journal, and Sycamore Review. He considers the Puget Sound area “home”—though he has been raised by much more of the Pacific Northwest, and now by Pennsylvania as well. Visit his website: www.geffreydavis.com
Return to November 2013 Edition