Heidi Seaborn
—
Love
there’s so much I don’t tell you. How the way
you say yes gets me every time. I languish
in the language of our morning. Could grow
old under the moon that bends through our skylight.
Marooned in this late life marriage, I’ve come to desire
our isolation. There’s an elderly couple
that walk hand-in-hand past our home most days.
I’ve stopped imagining us. Sometimes, I bite
off a question as if it’s a piece of chocolate, let it warm
in my mouth, savor the dark sweetness of unknowing.
When first a heatwave and finally a storm killed
the plum tree, I mourned spring and the stupid love
of everything pink. But you cut the plum tree
into firewood, and on my birthday, we burned it all.
After Viewing Helen Frankenthaler’s “Flirt”
haven’t we
oh rosy morning
yesterday a rain-
bow seen
between long-legged
palms reaching
you first
the sun a bit too
unconcerned
everywhere ocean
tide nibbling streets
once I waved to a
stranger
and then, we
I hear the future
is green
furry shadows arch
their backs
like cats
come close before
eucalyptus
silver the ground
with bells
let’s drink
yes I’m alone
in the cactus
beneath the sunshine
orange and blossoming
all this blush and
bird trill
Heidi Seaborn is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and winner of The Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors Prize in Poetry. She is the author of three award-winning books/chapbooks of poetry: An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Give a Girl Chaos, and Bite Marks. Recent or forthcoming work in Agni, Blackbird, Copper Nickel, diode, Financial Times of London, Penn Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Plume, Rattle, The Slowdown and elsewhere. Heidi holds an MFA from NYU. heidiseabornpoet.com
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