AUTUMN AS CARMINE ON A COLLAR
Autumn leaves
a seasonal mark
—on a T-shirt you gifted me—
and its musky aroma
darkens a hunger in me
wide as a field of chrysanthemum.
Even though when I kissed you
I tasted a sapphire flame, do
I miss the floating harm
of fiery leaves? No,
but now a distant train’s
notes appear to ghost my nose
with unhurried puffs of air
drifting or falling as if being
bent into your cursive scent.
Do these scarlet leaves
imitate your cardinal lips
when they tilted my world
by decreeing that “librarian
is the sexiest word”
or when their shadows mimic
the harmonic minor of your winged
eyeliner resolving into a dominant chord?
Is there enough medicine
in any pair of glasses to sharpen
an i pencil’s arc into a complex sign
on a falling star chart
where your contralto doesn’t season
every broth into a brothel?
After all, what half blind thing
—if it dreams—doesn’t
mostly dream of falling?
Carmine can’t of course
be the only shade of autumn
leaves that turns me like
handcuff keys towards what
once surely was
the tips of your fingers
brushing my bare forearms
—and could’ve still been—
unless your lowered lashes
& my bent limbs
prayed to what ache?
And yet the truth is my nipples
are vestigial, but somehow still
redden to rumors
of ruby on fingernails.
Maybe if you hadn’t
swiped my burgundy hoodie
while pouting & pretending
to hide the lone in cologne,
I might’ve stopped falling
for the one shade of lipstick
on your private playlist
that raced my heart
like a Little Red Corvette.
In case of emergency—
brake lite/break lights/
break lightly.
Given what was reflected
in your oversized glasses
how could any lens
have foreseen our state bird
being a cardinal sin?
Now, the collar of memory
circles me like a bull with horns
lowered and nose flared
or tries to walk me like a bulldog
as if all the black bulls
I’ve ever been or was
dogged into being never
learned release from their rings—
nose or otherwise—
except by confinement.
Ellipses of rimshot & gunshot
& bloodshot eyes.
You likely won’t be back—
all the minor falls left
too many wounds for that—
so why do I keep trying to divine
which chords might
reharm our major lift?
What blush of nested notes
tightens while autumn leaves
twist softly as keys in secret
drawers storing maps
I trace nightly to recall—
tho not as any gospel
played in a church or brothel?
Yet could any cardinal—or even
the jay that begins my name—
sing of where a lifting fifth
of train whistle must land to leave
a place for a necklace of ruby
caress across your collarbone?
