Verso
This is the name I wrote on
the inside
of your book: Maple-Tongue.
Or
was it Sage-Brush, Lilac,
Potter’s-
Arm? I brushed up on my
Italian
and got honest. You spoke
fast
and gave me books to read.
Inherent
to the body is some degree of
wine;
inherent to the wine is a
window.
Watch the branches sway past
the window, darling; watch
weather
find its penchants, stake its
path
and clear out the city, Storm
Warning
at five, everything rained on
and you
upstairs, amassing the
sandbags
of chocolate and old movies,
half
at ease, half laughing at the
concept
of a wind – as though it
would take us,
unnoticed, as though we were
not
happy, standing here?
Rebecca Givens has poems upcoming in The
Gettysburg Review, The Seattle Review, Puerto del Sol,
and 32 Poems. Recently she won an Academy of American Poets
Award.