Poetry: Golden Hour by Arman Avasia
Like the snake that appears in its second line, Arman Avasia’s sonnet is a transformation through intimacy. Visceral with desire that is amplified in the animal imagery scattered throughout, the reader is brought into the “urgent” and left in the turn of the final couplets understanding this memory to be a point of illumination.
Golden Hour
Your body is urgent & urging
on mine. Outside, a snake slips its skin
leaves the pelt on the porch
like ripped-up wrapping paper
like our clothes strewn across the floor.
Our bodies contort together—
a tender, immaculate fist.
Your nails, my teeth, our necks—
what’s sharp searches for soft
to sink through. Sleep brims the room
but the clear, quavering cry
of the blackbird refuses to let us go.
When I hold the memory up to the light
it’s the light that fades.
