So what of this empty street, new blank fridge,
old pictures waiting to be hung?
Here is the same before: bluejays, steeple clouds, darkening
over shuddered houses and rusty cars in yards.
Each night, crickets know the value of a repetitive task;
cicadas send clicks to the lemon-rind edge of the moon.
Not one but two tire swings hang from the shattered maple
in the neighbor’s yard, part of spinning we never give up.
Since it hurts not to, being-with-you must be compulsory,
a respite from a heavy sigh that can’t be lifted.
After that realization, it’s always the same way home, past this little fear,
a loose cat in the alley—the progress of one canvas sky to another:
the firefly is a worthwhile cliché, the way wings lift before body,
or the earthworm, with its two sexes and five impossible hearts.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 17, Issue 3.
Christina Seymour’s chapbook, Flowers around Your Soft Throat, is forthcoming from Structo Magazine. Her work appears in North American Review, Cimarron Review, Wingbeats II (Dos Gatos Press), Wick Poetry Center’s exhibit, Speak Peace—American Voices Respond to Vietnamese Children’s Paintings, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Maryville College in east Tennessee.
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