Cuisine of Loneliness

We were speaking of dreams the other day and since I’d written about my “best” publication, I thought I’d copy out the actual poem. I’m also taking a two-week workshop and will have to devote time to that rather than my ramblings.It was written under an early pen name. (Kalliope, Volume 7, No. 2)

Stonemen
April Cole

In a dream I was taught by touching the walls of a cave

I would turn to stone,

not be noticed by the armies of the night.

Watching brown-shirted boys

wrap around blue-bloused girls,

blowing hot breath in their tangled hair,

I feel my fingers claw the clay.

I am sixteen.

Between arias

we eat Tandoori chicken

twine fingers to cislunar violins.

Intermezzo harp resonates

deep space darkness of the heart.

He licks saffron from my lips.

Natant, I become the liquid sky.

I am twenty one.

In the distance he is standing

silhouetted against brush blue hills.

I call and he runs towards the scarlet sun.

He is a rabbit hopping through reeds,

he is a bramble bush blowing down the fence row.

He tumbles and flies, tumbles and flies.

I am twenty four.