After You Left
Since we parted, I am beside myself
Another version of me darts about
I look for me everywhere
finding only a wisp here, a crumb there
a foot running down the bare corridor
a hand twisting the golden knob of a door
another hand on the kitchen counter
clutching the throbbing
apple-shaped heart
I place the slick meat in a porcelain dish
where it weeps ink
and asks me with a voice of peaches and rain
sun, fungus, mud
to save it until I may touch you again
Missed Connections
It was a Thursday
You passed through a field
of yellow flowers and sat down beneath a barren olive tree
You never saw me
You were taller than lightning
hair the color of ashes
Prayers glimmered like rubies where your teeth should be
Between your arms, a stone well sank into the ground
Insects of golden filament were drawn
from the farthest regions to your sighs
Then you whispered: save me
I wanted to ask for your number but had
no voice
I was an ant in the dirt near your foot
I was the breeze that caressed you when you felt most alone
When the sun blinded you, I was that sun
When the berries tasted bitter, I was the sweetness
that wasn’t there
I was the chafe of your jeans
I was the moisture between your toes
I was the water trembling on the leaf
that brushed your elbow as you walked
I was a bee sipping the nectar of your past
I was the stain that clung to your coat
I was the raw longing in your hands
Call me
Lytton Bell has published five books: A Path before Winter (1998), The Book of Chaps (2002), Nectar (2011), Poetica Erotica, Volume I (2012) and Body Image (2013), won six poetry contests and has been the featured reader at many California literary venues. Her work has appeared in over three dozen publications. As a teenager, Lytton won a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts, where she studied with Deb Burnham of the American Poetry Review and the late Len Roberts, author of The Silent Singer. Lytton graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College. Email her at [email protected].
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