Poetry: Speaking to My Lover from Beyond the Grave by Dorsey Craft
Love is our single most power that defies the finality of death. Gorgeously achy, yet grounded in a domestic setting, the poem’s speaker paints a landscape of longing punctuated by hope.
Speaking to My Lover from Beyond the Grave
These days I am husky, a tube of crescent
rolls that wanders from door to window,
a thick shadow heeded by few, a dachshund
rancorous behind a fence. I follow
the sun around a vast circle of windows,
shed light like fur. The television plays vague
as a party. I’m no longer one for metaphors.
Each creeping lizard carries only brittle green.
Do you remember the skeleton crouched
behind the toilet? How her ribs like curved
needles powdered in your fingers? When I dream,
we nestle cool beneath the wreath. Naps are deep
and frequent, but I wake at each jingle or shift
of light, shiver of a prayer, your eye in the keyhole.
Dorsey Craft
Dorsey Craft is the author of Plunder (Bauhan 2020), winner of the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, Willow Springs and elsewhere. She currently serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Agni.
