Paradise
When I looked up again, the
light had changed what I saw
of myself in you. Seaside air
laved our skin frankly sexual
where we touched. We made
a depression that bruised in
the thigh’s bright hollow.
Common Baby’s Ear and
Scotch Bonnet. Within
the labial fold. A surface
broken by vents, vortices,
and breathing indentations.
Events mapped in a medium
that looks right back at us,
just asking for preservation.
Paradise
But how will I find my way to
the sea, with no tragedy and
no staircase love to make me
yank my own eyes out. Out
on the town beach, egrets
and herons, sandpipers and
seagulls, pelicans and brown
terns. Orderly music.
Though my memory was
of sleeping, not of a gravesite,
and I dreamed of swallowing
fistfuls of grass. Stretched
logic till it turned poetic.
Does it, or anything, make
actual the subjective roil
buried in even a lover. Like
killing a mosquito and your
own blood splatters the wall.
In the wilderness, there’s no
such thing as wilderness. The
boy sits in his patch of dirt
and spreads it about. What is
a city of love. What is a city.
Paradise
There was loft in the
sentence, air in the heart.
A record not of your activity
but of the climate in which it
occurred. The explanation
was no genuine explanation,
but a series of pre-established
responses, easily memorized,
each naturally triggering a
new question, until the
querent walked away
“oriented.” It feels like
the brain unraveling, but it’s
just ideas. The red spots
indicate healing and alarm
the children. She liked to tell
a story about a time when
her son had been lost, and
instead of running around
in pursuit, he’d been
responsible, and sat down on
a bench to be found. Waiting
for an outcome, from afar.
Could you do the wrong
thing, please.
Paradise
A few more contented
minutes, the mothers yawn
and press the corners of their
eyes with their fingers. How
still is your morning. The
phrase, something my father
might have said but never
definitively did, played back
in my mind at predictable
times, such as when I lay
awake and delirious at 3 a.m.,
and also at inopportune
though unimportant times, as
when I deliberated too long
about my coffee order while
a line formed behind me, and
his voice slowed, deepened,
prolonged each articulated
syllable beyond the range of
simple discomfort, so that I
felt each time as though I was
“losing my mind,” an
abandonment I’d long
expected, and eventually
the language of the phrase
deteriorated, leaving only the
cadence and the tone of his
voice behind. Why should I
be sad, or careful, accounting
for any cost. Perception isn’t
memory, all alone. As you
know you’re safe when you
see the lightning. A blue cup
with a white lip. I love the
whirls and striations of this
“flat” stone.
Andy Stallings lives in Deerfield, MA, where he teaches English and poetry at Deerfield Academy. He taught several years at Tulane University prior to that, and has published a book of poems, To the Heart of the World, with Rescue Press (2014). He has three small children, and coaches cross country.
