Heather Cadenhead
#5 Vol 2 2 poems 'Dusk' |
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Heather Cadenhead's work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Illuminations, Sotto Voce, Boston Literary Magazine, and others. She lives and writes in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, with her husband, Tyson, and their dog, Arthur.
Dusk
Skim the surface of a milky-white water with your fingertip
and stick your tongue out to taste the start of night.
Sit with her by the stack of watermelons at the side of your house,
and let her bring you strawberry tea in a sweating glass mug.
You'll be in the stars tomorrow, you'll become an asteroid.
Lie behind the pile of logs in her backyard after she's gone,
rub the earring you stole from her jewelry box against your thumb;
you're the only one here. You should rifle through her notebooks
later, find out if she kept that letter you told her to throw away.
The fading afternoon sky is magnetic, and your chest juts out
to meet it midway, to match mortal with magenta permanence.
You run your feet over liquefied sanctuary, with lakewater
casting an aquatic spell over everything, stilling it for the last time.
You're about to sink into the night, too, and melt beneath the fingertip
that pushes all beneath the milky white.
Heather Cadenhead
There is a Knowing Landscape
When you say my name, say it like you say
Saint Ann or Ron Paul, like it means something
more than a word like shelf or muffin.
When we lie down at night, you will inevitably go to sleep
before me. That is to be expected. The first few nights,
I'll try to keep you up. Whether it be rattling the bed,
or having a nightmare, or getting up for a glass of water.
I'll train my eyes to make the ceiling look interesting.
When my eyes tire of what's there, I'll start seeing new things.
It takes you an hour, sometimes, to finish the page.
You say, I will caress you when I get to the end.
Sometimes I fall asleep waiting.
You cleaned up the dishes after dinner. There are
two things I want to say about that: 1) That is usually my job,
and 2) Don't try to wash the casserole pan tonight.
Soak it, then check it in the morning.
Now everyone is sleeping. You, the dog, our neighbor
“Teevee” with six cats in her front yard. Why did you
close your eyes? Because you could, I think, is the answer.
Heather Cadenhead
