Poem: St. Gemini Looks at the Map St. Caduceus Drew Her

St. Gemini Looks at the Map St. Caduceus Drew Her One Cloudy Morning to Find Her Way Home 

By Fox Frazier-Foley
QuailBellMagazine.com

       
                Your understudy seduces me
like an aria grown redundant

                                                 until the mezzo hoarsens & you lean
                                                                          in, knowing this could

get interesting — my precipice, antelope,
                        stone-cutting sloth. Establish your

                                                           estuary in me during sleep. Alarm like a lazy

                                  cock, it doesn't wake me

                                                                                     from my dreamt botany, barely
                                                                        midwifes me this monotony: I abandon

myself, an impotent boy plunging
into honeysuckle. Daybreak comes embarrassed

                                        & bright as misplaced snowfall on some
          Atlantic cape in autumn. We swim

less towards each other than through 
                                                                                                                   the scent we fear
not missing. Sap from dying
maples reaches us as amber

                                                congealing to glass. We will
                                                                                                                 mold a menagerie
                                                                                                                 of monsters from it.

Virus       who taught           me          all unraveled
virtues   of yearning,       my mouth     hurts  for your curve.         You will         not spread

            your calligraphy                       brush against me         again

                               nor surface             past this lake of curdled        doubt.

As a child, I found

           a rabbit in brush, stroked it, oblivious that its heart
                                                                                                  had stopped at my touch.
                                    This is how I learned
                                                 fear; abandoned

          between tracks & graffiti underground, a mattress
                      must lend itself to vagabond bodies. Like a hound clenching

its kill until sinew
                                                                        is pried from jaw: let inertia

         testify, you whom I covered & left 

                                                                                  sighing, sleep-eyed as a nightjar.

#Unreal #Poetry #FoxFrazierFoley #Diction #Space #Messenger #GreekMythology #Folklore
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