Spring Quartet
BY JACQUES J. RANCOURT
1/
Music throbs like a heart underwater.
Before the bathroom mirror, the men
on Molly lift up their arms to compare
their pit hair. When you click close the door,
the party mutes to a murmur. Outside: cedars, stars,
black crickets bounding. You look to see
that no one is watching (It’s nearly too much,
the joy of you). When you kiss me, I am pulled
out of myself like a snake from its old skin.
2/
Treacherous, to cherish this. Black vines yanked
from the dirt, the overgrowth giddy with
sunlight: we act out the motions of two
people in love. I’m greedy for change.
In the empty park, the colonnade leans
its blunt shadows north. Through your hair
I run my hand while we sit on granite slabs,
our soaked speedos leaving behind
wet hearts. I ought to love what I already have.
3/
At Acadia’s frayed edge, we become sick;
how does that happen in a place like this?
I tell you things I would not say sober.
Bees thieve pollen from the throats of angel’s
trumpets, but this cannot last; God makes nearly
nothing inextinguishable. Tonight
when I smack a mosquito with a novel
against the wall, it leaves behind
the bright smear of someone else’s blood.
4/
It’s nearly summer, I’m nearly glad, at last,
to be alive. When you breed me,
I carry you through the harshly lit aisles.
When we make love, we hear the upstairs
neighbors make love over us, almost
in rhythmic unison. Plum blossoms outside
falling steadily as a spring blizzard;
one hundred million copies of you.
I didn’t know I still had the capacity for shame.
Observer Effect
BY JACQUES J. RANCOURT
Like cotton candy,
like something
made of pure sweetness,
whose only purpose
is to be pure
sweetness: how
our dog’s cancer
looked when exposed
by the x-ray. If seeing
changes the behavior
of light, here
in the waiting room
I am seeing my life
at last: a new love
leaving a voicemail
I won’t listen to
for days, my not-yet
ex-husband
whom I loved
for the past decade
sitting beside me
through our dog’s
final hours. Our—
a word so easy
it dissolves like
sugar in the mouth.
When the vet tech
returns I rest
my hand
on the familiar knee.
When I leave out
those sliding doors
to walk back alone
to my new studio,
I leave into
a dawn so young
the streetlamps
are still lit, and the light—
those competing
sources of light—
splits my shadow
in two directions.
