for all the girls the sun has risen for after L i could barely pour the morning orange juice, or spell my middle name but with you, i knew i wanted to be both the snow angel and your glittering imprint after N you wore a shirt from the Dalí museum one thousand miles away, across the row in honors chemistry, i said “i’ve been there,” meant to say, “i can’t wear yellow, but you could mute the sun” after A in the sober morning i made you sunny-side eggs and steak from provisions my parents left for me “and a friend” with E prayer for apricity: every day is sun- day, and we share the same patch of dawn for- ever Metamourphosis She pulls the nectar out of my skin, fascia twists into gilded crinkles-- she folds me gently back into myself, as wax paper wrapping a sacred text. Each fingernail perforates a sieve to strain the gold from my bones, tendrils of veins spiral, root beneath her feet to grow into ivy that chokes our house. “I like the ivy,” but I know it clings to the brick and little tokens of mortar are crumbs for its hungry mouth. “I know it’s bad but it’s beautiful.” She notes a known quantity, slow implosion, inevitable as entropy. I can predict my own death: a spiderless web of vegetation growing through me and for the first time in its own sacred genealogy, the fruitless vines will bloom into a multitude of flowers, a tomb of petals. Ghazal for the Rose of Mayfair Before the haze of the Pen&Pencil you rose, alight in black satin, curved blush-hue rose. By any other name, two bullets for each letter, the bard would recognize you, Montague rose. Spectre, eccola bella! at the corner of Fifteenth and Spruce, eternal sunshine Nosferatu rose. From the terracotta bannister of your new stoop, greening the backyard– the smoke, a corkscrew rose. And Sundays, we drink chilled pink in honeyed cells of that streetside cafe. Teacup orange, deja vu rose. Since you were six, we filter the world for you through twenty-twenty crystal, color the point of view rose. Dark party bars, from the concrete purgatory of verse– oh B.B.! In all this Eden, you are the only true rose! Post-Prandial Love Poem for a New Home “Places, everyone!” is the call after dinner. We sink into respective corners of the double-chaise puzzle- pieced together. IKEA didn’t intend for this style of assembly, but what else do you need with two humans and two dogs? The thick cotton cushions with woodblocked hills in shades of green, outdoor pillows and their undulant polyester waves, a black velvet bolster on sale after Halloween with an orange forked tongue emerging from an embroidered serpent. They’re in their corner: needy russet mutt who I love almost as much as my fair lover. I have to airlift my own small orange dog from her nautilus. This new couch has no room for her to hide underneath. And now she has no reason to, except for errant thunderstorm, car alarm, or worse, interloping fly beating at the window. We are all safe now. Even when we spend the night on separate ends, faces lit with respective screens, mindlessly tapping, scrolling, we still share the space as a kind of together. This sky-blue tweed boat of a sofa, made from two pieces not intended to fit. But it’s just what we want, and we know how to make it. I turn on the twinkly lights, first hung for the holidays but now we celebrate year-round: survival, food, community, together. Each with our own space, our own creatures, two only-children and last of their names, making a nest for a new life. Pin(ing)s and Needles Like blood returning to a limb, or an untied tourniquet, love floods starving arteries; every cell re- calling trust, innate as muscle memory.
About the author:
Alison Lubar teaches high school English by day and yoga by night near Philadelphia. They are a queer, nonbinary femme of color whose life work (aside from wordsmithing) has evolved into bringing mindfulness practices, and sometimes even poetry, to young people. Their debut chapbook, Philosophers Know Nothing About Love, is out now with Thirty West (May 2022); you can find out more at http://alisonlubar.com/ or on Twitter @theoriginalison.
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
Isele Magazine 