Aubade

BY PAIGE QUIÑONES

Longing is an improper bit in the mouth.
You didn’t know the word in English,
so I explain: for horses, it’s nothing like when I put

my fingers in and grab your jaw and pull.
They’ve got this perfect empty space.

When you stand, naked, to grab a book or
a cigarette, I remind myself to memorize
your particular tilt. No man knows his end,

my father often says to me. It’s about dying,
but I hear: a lover can exit a doorway, a lover

can unwittingly click his teeth
against yours, the first filly to win the Derby
can be named Regret—mine is in the form

of hard muscle and foam.

Paige Quiñones is a PhD candidate in poetry at the University of Houston, where she is the Managing Editor at Gulf Coast. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Crazyhorse, Prelude, Poetry Northwest, Sixth Finch, Sycamore Review, and elsewhere. Her first collection, The Best Prey, won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry and is forthcoming from Pleiades Press in February 2021.

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