Our Grotto
I remember you as a telephone voice, pealing your name.
Female artist guised as a bat that fifth of July,
re-guised as a woman now sighing in bathtub midwinter.
With gold-plated grapefruit spoons, windowed bonsai.
Wings of Desire and the miles’ walk to your room.
Split grapefruit sugared and squeezed late that July,
then flatmate’s stiff outrage: odd man in the bathroom.
Now cities of bookshelves, childhood piano, pine tree bonsai.
As a woman you surfaced in newsprint, withheld your name.
Female artist sugared my pen, eared like a bat
homed toward new eaves, your bedroom our grotto.
Skittered across arsoned lots for the same
two knocks at your window over the gnome in a dome below stairs.
I remember your fire demon, futon overseer in paint that July.
The eureka girlfriend, my only she: even midwinter
is honeyed with greening like our bonsai.
by David P. Miller
Editor’s Note: The repetition in this poem weaves through the lines like the framework of a house. The narrator’s relationship with his lover is offered through those images that occur again and again: artist, bonsai, midwinter, name, and my favorite, sugared. Without this framework, there would be no poem.
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