raises up animals from their water houses:
birds like wet laundry, alligators close enough to appear
long-lashed and serene, Florida chicken turtle
bundled in the apartment parking lot
as though delivered by drone. It’s a choking hazard
down here, May to October, a mouthful
of black grapes, head rush of supernatural and melodrama,
and when the crepe myrtle’s bubblegum wig
starts to shake, I can’t foretell
what may or may not descend. What ruin
or what cleanse. Lightning skewers a sun halo,
toothpick in hors d’oeuvres. And just today I saw
the place where a rainbow ends. It’s mostly green
graphic arc and intersection, fleeting
as a page in the Book of Common Prayer I mark and enter
when the apocalypse in my brain arrests me
that in light we may see light and I feel a desire to be lifted,
too. I want my heart to be drawn
and my imagination filled with what comes
after mercy—storm, flood, an ending not
in archway but in smokescreen
where sunset amends the rain
clouds like you’ve never seen a fire without flames.
That’s when the sweetest blue
yawns in soft pearls—color that can only be painted,
that belongs deep inside a seashell
or a body in love, tenderness I almost can’t believe I deserve.
ANNE BARNGROVER‘s most recent poetry collection, Brazen Creature, was published with The University of Akron Press in 2018 and was a finalist for the 2019 Ohioana Award for Poetry. She is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Saint Leo University, where she is on faculty in the low-residency MA program in Creative Writing, and lives in Tampa, Florida.
