Poem Beginning with a Line from Eugenio Montale
       

Upon me, upon you, and over the lemons
the day shook itself into listless clouds, thin
mouths of summer, adjunct syllables draped
over the lawn chair, heat coiling in the dark
hose like venom, like smoke. In a story
there is unspooling and then spooling,
in a hose there is only throat and never
enough water. Depending on who tells
this, we were either annoyed with the sun
or angry long before it arrived. Livid
or civil. She cried first, then I cried
first. The cicadas overheard were a globe
of even thinner glass, near invisible. We had
our own names but those meant nothing; I exist
twice, I am both here and gone, but the smoke
from her cigarette left only one ruby
before it joined the thinning chorus.

Tweet
Copyright © 2014 Brandon Amico All rights reserved
from The Carolina Quarterly
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission