Back to Issue Eighteen.

EVENING SKETCH: AFTER JACK GILBERT (2)

BY JAYDN DEWALD

flowers in darkness     trout in sunlight      the basement in

ruins      blue clouds in the night     inside the bedroom      bright hair

in sunlight      wrists in silk gloves, and dancing      in lines    black mirrors in

rainstorms      inside the heart      still leaves in the gutters in-   vaded his heart

in the mind a warm breeze     the lovers en-        shrouded        bring in the gods, and silk

gloves in tatters      still leaves in rainstorms      incense in lines       wrists in the gutters

the music inside      ruins in bedrooms        trout in the night       disrobing in

orchards       the woman alight      black mirrors invaded        in storms a man

blue clouds in the dancing      bright hair in his hands        bring in the gods

the lovers in sunlight       still leaves in black mirrors       silk gloves in

the gutters      the music’s in tatters it      flowers inside

 

evening sketch: after hopkins

BY JAYDN DEWALD

I awoke to call     in midwinter in the white

of the morning the moon     in the white of a finger-

nail dwindled and thinned to the fringe

of your photograph       the whites of your eyes

wild looking back askance      held over this candle

your paradisiacal flesh waning but luster-

less under the fruit trees      under dark Maenefa

the mountain I pushed your barrow        your grave dirt up out of the dark

Maenefa the mountain fanged with icicles

and into a moon-      stunned clearing in which lies

our one and only bed       silver-sheeted

its bodies our ghost bodies     dwindled and thinned

in the white of the morning in mid-     copulation entangled

eyelid and eye-      lid I prized open

the desirable sight unsought finally     there you are

held over this candle wild     looking back askance

leaf and leaf divided      from the fringe

of your photo-       graph a page of your flesh

divided     I awoke to call       in flames

Jaydn DeWald is a writer, teacher, jazz bassist, and the author of the prose chapbook The Rosebud Variations: And Other Variations (forthcoming from Greying Ghost). Recent work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Best New Poets 2015, Columbia Poetry Review, Fairy Tale Review, The National Poetry Review, West Branch, Witness, and many others. He lives with his partner and two kids in Bogart, Georgia, where he’s pursuing a PhD at the University of Georgia.

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