By: Dana Roark
solo
my other half is facedown
all gin slumped beside me
and i want nothing to do
with him, or us
but outside is a pink flamingo
floating in the chlorinated water
grazing idly against cobalt tiles
looping around
and around
what else can i do?
but lie back, transfixed
and calculate the drift pattern
of a pool toy:
smooth to the left
back to the center
now just spin awhile
wait for the wind
there must be a pattern
i’ve seen all the diagrams
like the flight path of bees,
the waves in a dune carved by wind,
the predictable rise of clouds
up from invisible vapor
just look at his mouth
hanging open
dead in a dream
of two giant ice cubes
hitting the next glass
and i am still here
with this ridiculous flamingo
and remembering a girl
who painted secret messages
on parchment paper with milk,
holding the page over a flame
until the words faded back into view:
love inside a heart
hello!
can you see me?
Pyro
You might as well come over
I’m burning stuff—
your invitation
to this reckoning
in need of a witness
your offerings
(ambered Polaroids,
piles of papers
a folded rainbow of clothes—
does it matter?)
precisely arranged
on a Tabriz rug
Look!
your open hand wafts
over the heaps
and you take in the heat
as they curl up, melt down
then disappear
before lowering your body
onto the cool floor
and crying
Dana Roark is a psychology lecturer at The University of Texas at Dallas and a part-time poet. She is also hopelessly nocturnal.
"Notes on solo:
Humans tend to look for patterns—Shouldn’t there be some rational explanation for the events that happen to us and the thoughts that occupy us? Here I consider the idea that there are no patterns. Sometimes, everything just floats.
Notes on Pyro:
I overheard the opening two lines of this poem from a woman talking on her cell phone, as the two of us were waiting for an elevator. This poem is how I imagined things played out."