Olena Kalytiak Davis

[from Olena Kalytiak Davis’s shattered sonnets love cards and other off and back handed importunities, 2003]

in the clear long after

Spring is cheap, but clean of sky. Long after she used to
meet him on the sly. He didn’t say much, because to
speak you need a voice, need lead. Among the dead there were
such fresh ghosts, they were still breathing. Through their
mouths. Time, time, to adjust to an other. An ether
O so—No—too sweet. Intox-icated with permeability. ’Tis nox-
ious, to eat evanescence. However steadily, however slowly.
They stemmed into heady blows.
They missed
the stain. Of blue berries and argument. They missed
their lips. The yew and the thorns. They missed.
Their flaws.

O, to be stung by an errant bee. O, to sting.
O, to see you again. Covered in spring.