The Moment a Husband Stops Being a Husband and Starts
Being a Black and White Photograph of a Husband

You were imagining little mountains
        in the soap bubbles in the bathroom sink

all summer long and you forgot you were a leopard,
                   meant to spot everything.

                                                More darkness every day.
You wouldn’t know when, exactly,

                                                                          he flew,
        what he smelled in the you-less air

or what he held   in his mouth        that tasted like river
stones

         and bloodied knees.
                       What does a dancer say to an engineer,

         one New Hampshire cabin too late,
                   that gypsy memory

and wishful thinking
                            have not already said?

 

 

 

 

schmeidlerLynn Schmeidler’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous literary magazines, including Boston Review, Fence, Comstock Review, and White Stag; as well as various anthologies, including Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books (Minor Arcana Press), Mischief, Caprice and Other Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press), Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed (Parlor Press), and Bared (Les Femmes Folles Books). Her chapbook, Curiouser & Curiouser, won the 2013 Grayson Books Chapbook Contest.

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