Sina Queyras

 

 from Euphoria

                                                       1

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of stone, my age

Old, burnished and bruised, my hair lingering, my hand caked, spongy as

November my dear Relentless, my dear Aging, your voice tinny, dissonant 

As Stein shot through decades of war and Fortrel, cocktails on the hour,  

Zeppelins over Piccadilly, bombing blindly in the fog. Dear Skin, dear Tobacco 

Mouth my refusal, my merely geographic, my fibrous strings for you: your 

Abundant wit, your lack of shadow and still joy nosing the air. Each moment 

Stretches toward you, your dry feet: I carried them, pumiced and peppery

Laid them where regret is a biscuit thing to lean upon and sweeten, 

My hour of you, my cursive thoughts, a pulpit beating under these ribs.

                                                       2

Dear Time, you swallowed us whole, swallowed us lovely, sharp as bones

Crimping sadly under foot my benign, my flotsam and crabs thin as leaves 

Your smoothing, your sinking in. Mornings or mooring, or wallowing 

Jericho: tapioca air indolent. I am still there, supple and driftwood, you lovely, 

You loved me, your memory dark and west, thoughts like tugboats stitching

The horizon, you pulling me, my pudding, my thin crustacean, sideways

In the late afternoon, your gaze, having so soon forgotten the sharpness 

Of mornings, the bite of your look serrating the hour: my treasures, all 

Of them, for the pleasure of that slice once more, of our dangling, 

You and me, the lot of us in some car, driving some hour, mapless.