The Crosses In Your Diamond Legs

Katherine Gibbel

 

grow overcast this morning germane

 

    to my love your quiet noises

 

  of and in the water

 

what I can’t quit I bring with me

 

    corrugated rock and orange daylilies

 

  like the skirt on Flaming June

 

and thank god for neither of us

 

    remember seeing her at the Frick

 

  so we can go together

 

and compare the sun to you

 

    James resplendent in mesh

 

  neon orange daylight

 

crowding out the clouds

 

    each temporary tattoo of the bird

 

  crossing the sky printed on our arms

 

filmy and obscure—riverlike in gesture

 

    stained with one streaky red

 

  the train completing this railroad apartment

 

somehow “in the country” which is to say

 

    its newness is all you

 

  the sand now turning as you say:

 

the cloud approaches the moon like a spaceship

 
 
 

KATHERINE GIBBEL’s poems have been published in Bat City Review, The Bennington Review, Gulf Coast Online, Underblong and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa and Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.