Amplitude, Awe
Robyn Art
I remember it differently: there was no moon,
no buggy yard,
no dream of falling objects from which we awaken,
A priori and beating.
Now like other people I open the windows at night,
All I want to say at once ironic and sincere
Like in an eighties-hair-metal, high-school-burnouts
-in-the-parking-lot sort of way.
In my version of our high school years,
there were no high school years.
I want to say that everything is at some point
Extinguished, x to y
Like a Garfield nightshirt to lust.
For every unfishable body of water,
There is something salutatory and beating,
Sworn enemies with one shared,
colossal love.
In my version of our theme song
all is quietly aflutter like the wingbeats
of distant birds you alone summon inside of me
even now that we are never alone.
Dear Inveterate Dreamer, of all the impossible burdens
yours is the one that calls to me, softly,
through the wet grass…
Robyn Art is the author of The Stunt Double in Winter (Dusie, 2008), which was a finalist for both the Sawtooth Poetry Prize and the Kore First Book Award. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in The New Guard, Yew, Word/For Word, 42opus, Gulf Coast, and La Petite Zine.