Central Intelligence
To Nichita
She’s not here.
Among the fireflies; the shriveled, breathing trees.
She’s gone among the office sweets
With their grizzly pale light,
skinning consciousness from my eyes.
I keep my tears close to my chest, like a game of darts
On a Saturday night; piano keys sensing words or a flotation device in a plane.
A loss of oxygen: against
the glow of your tenderness, fierce, forgetting itself
Against the rest.
It catches me strong as a square dancing hawk
or maybe a centipede galloping at a track.
All that, and a molehill of saccharine.
Cheap Perfume
Crown of stars hemmed against my head,
I walk in valleys dead by birds,
Redeemed in time— a ground of light
In kissed replies…
Pecking echoes. Soul of ice cream. Mind of hocus.
Here I am, like all the rest, crayon trails
Upon me now. Imprinted tombs of innocence bent
Afraid and slashed: like zealot flesh
To my grave by acid snails—
Waking up to cheap perfume.
“Central Intelligence” and “Cheap Perfume” first appeared on Vocal.Media.
Alfonse Battistelli is a poet from Columbus, Ohio. He studied history and linguistics in college. His poems have appeared in 614 Magazine and Short North Gazette. He has a calico cat named Greta.
Sparks of Calliope 