Bed and Binary
Once, a sheet of paper could not be slipped
between us, atoms bouncing together
like jumping jacks tossed by schoolgirls.
Days of creation stretched out like a
tightly pulled rubber band, a type
of wound fingertips organic spring,
soles, eyelashes that in the animal dark
moaned like the birth of hot wet seeds
in the rich loam of encounter.
Now, an artic crevasse unarticulated,
memory pangs, has become our igloo.
Soft yellow fat, sweet smelling tallow
flickers only for a moment, burns
through the wrong end.
The Parting
Should I have you as a partner
or a stalker? One would be as
appropriate as another. Partners
always turn into strangers at the door,
badguy in a 1940s film noir.
With your soft eyes, sharpened nails,
claws that bind, you would partner
with the stalker or stalk the partner.
Since the Mayan apocalypse has come
and gone, these days you can never tell—
old photos say the same story:
A Rockette’s demise, World War II
newspaper clippings, Elton John and
goodbye Norma Jean—all partners—all
pursued by the wizard in their heads.
You would love the same, dance at
the new year, prepare the feast for
the table, ring the door; scale the
walls of Troy, filet Odysseus, strip
the jackets of men to sew a coat of
many colors, cohabit with gypsy
Sisters speaking your lost tongue,
until you partner with the sounds of space
stalking the last cathedral bell.
Ralph Monday is an Associate Professor of English at Roane State Community College in Harriman, TN., where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing courses. In fall 2013 he had poems published in The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Fiction Week Literary Review, and was represented as the featured poet with 12 poems in the December issue of Poetry Repairs. In winter 2014 he had poems published in Dead Snakes. Summer 2014 will see a poem in Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology of Best Present Day Poems. His work has appeared in publications such as The Phoenix, Bitter Creek Review, Impressions, Kookamonga Square, Deep Waters, Jacket Magazine, The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Crack the Spine, The Camel Saloon, Dead Snakes and Poetry Repairs.
