Nick Antosca The 2River View, 7.3 (Spring 2003)

The Milk Blood Landscape

The limes that I sliced for dinner
are rough-skinned and dry by now,
and you are chapped eyes and a raw, red mouth
          sulking by the pallid curtains, coughing.

Outside our open window
the evening is ethereal and strange,
opaque with sugary rain,
eerie with the pale vestigial majesty
of a sun half-drowned in the horizon.

And as the anxious dusk thickens,
glittering with rain,
a summer darkness descends
          to saturate starved flesh,
bathing drained, albino bodies with blue-white luminescence
that hums, whispers, mumbles with sleepy erotic energy.

The October rustle of dry leaves
inside my limbs and torso
is nightmare-inspiring.
And as I rise from languid shadows
and glide to you, I see myself described
like a fiction in your eyes;
and outside in the charred twilight,
snow is drifting down.
The seasons have gone insane.

And I approach you with hungry caution,
but I’m lost and cagey when faced
with the twin blue fires and the memories of lies
in your easily-bruised face.
Dirty tears fall accusingly
and dry slowly as our dinner goes cold,
and your cobalt eyes are flushed with hurt and lust,
while a blizzard of ash and static snarls at the window.

CoverPrevious PoemNext Poem 2River