Quincy Lehr
Shoreline

You pause a moment, sitting still at last,
and only feel a breeze and sun. Hot, cold
in equipoise as you take in the sight
of shores and waves and houses on a ridge.
Our world is land and air, an island set
in amniotic possibility.
You close your eyes. You never liked the sea.

If Love Will Seek Us Yet

I

A couple whispers in a restaurant,
and you and I can only guess the tone
of what they might be saying from the gaunt
wrist weighed down with bracelets she extends,
angrily flicking at a mobile phone.
He sighs, of course, resignedly pretends
he feels no panic. The menu's put aside-
so no dessert, a hurried denouement
of shotgunned wine and then the awkward slide
out to streets and sidewalks, a hungry dog or cat,
an end they neither settle for nor want.
I watched-for the distraction? Was it that?

I strained at keeping them in line of sight,
a narrative that's similar enough
to you and me, the restless turns that might
twist your face toward mine-from separate beds,
the distance a relief, although it's rough
to search our dictionaries and our heads

for what we mean
in the yellow sheen
of a half-dead lightbulb's glare
above a cluttered chair
and shelves and sheets and an unread book
and memories of how you look
when I no longer dream you but you wait
not in sleep, but some adjacent state.

II

Somewhere, there's a man in love.
Somewhere, there's a habit-
a glass of wine, a cigarette
waiting for me to grab it.

Lips try to find the rising smoke.
The scents that thread the air
remind me of a ritual,
remind me of a prayer,

a smear of red against the lip-
holy, but a trickle.
A crumb of bread goes down the throat.
The way of flesh is fickle.

I'm not sure what the penance is
or if I should atone,
or if somebody's watching me,
or if I'm all alone,

and all the shadows that I see
are mine at different angles
in dim and inconsistent light
that both reveals and mangles.

Whose hand is that against my throat?
Whose elbow gives the prod?
Is this the bouncer on my back,
or am I wrestling God?

III

To name a thing's to know it, to control
it in a way that's never specified
somewhere between the eardrum and the soul,
the strike and the reflex.
                                             "Tell me if it hurts."
Tell me if it healed, or if it died.
Tell me what it's called, the just deserts,
a history that only lacks a name
on its front page.
                                And one commits in air
to the sounds that mean ourselves, the same
rustle of pages in an unread book
one hardly notices despite the bare
poverty of nouns to catch that look
you gave me. Let it linger. let it go,
needless and nameless, lost and out of breath!
Let it dissipate and sink below
memory's horizon, a phrase once chanted,
now mumbled sound, a useless shibboleth
hardly worth the entry it once granted.

IV

There's always too much echo in my brain,
reverberations of a second thought,
and far too many figures-there's my age;
over there, you'll see the stuff I bought
for no good reason. There's the stain
from some forgotten sin. And there's the wage
I somehow earn that molders in the bank,
naming itself unto the very cent.
And there's her voice, still choked with love, still rank
and moldy from neglect. And there's a clock
that calls the time it was, and where it went
in whimpers of despondency and shock.

V

You can count the inches of the light
expanding on the sill
this sleepless morning. All is blue
outside. No switch can kill,
even postpone the sun's indifferent rays,
redeem the fretted hours
of too-brief darkness. I can hear
the distant hiss of showers
and footsteps thumping somewhere overhead
to reach the distant street,
but I'll stay here despite the day.
It's best to know you're beat.

If I could rise and make my way outside,
if love may seek us yet,
if I could make it to the train,
and if my path were set,
I'd try to scan the shadows on the wall
of black or grayish tint
and graffiti on the tunnel walls
searching for a hint
within the whorls and wisps, a hidden map
of where I need to go
despite the hour, despite the odds.
I guess I'll never know.

VI

We love you, ladies of the stratosphere,
and always have with awkward arrogance,
watching you spin uncaring through the clouds.
You must be there; I think I saw you once-
Did you smile? The vision wasn't clear.
The fog set in too soon in grime-gray shrouds.

We love you, ladies of the equinox,
and we return predictably to mourn
our wayward appetites, our listless lust,
another garment mended, then re-torn.
Was it sackcloth? Was it only socks?
See you again this time next year, we trust.

We love you, ladies of another place
with all your dances we don't understand,
your contrapuntal phrasings, and the bait
of features not our own. A different land,
season, and sky make a different face.
Is this really love? You'll have to wait.

VI

Mother of incense, Mother of smoke,
Mother of the hour we croak,
Mother of mercy, Mother of peace,
Mother of wheels in need of grease,
Mother of glory, Mother of shit,
Mother of mouths around the tit,
Mother of wisdom. Mother knows best.
Grant me solace. Grant me rest.

_ _

Quincy R. Lehr's poems and criticism have appeared in numerous venues in North America, Europe, and Australia. His first book is Across the Grid of Streets , and he is the associate editor of The Raintown Review. He not unexpectedly lives in Brooklyn, where he teaches history.

<< Back to Issue 15, 2012