Image                                                                                                                      —Rae Gouirand


That is, for me, the hardest part:
when you look further

into the dark of the eye that must
be looked into further, & 

my whole field turns
you looking in—

when your eyes go to me,
shifting green to blue by the light,

clear before me making
their way inside, when they are

clearing, and I am trying
to keep mine open, watching

you open how
hard this sometimes is, &

then that I can, as we both
pause for that door that splits and

pass, respectively, through it.
 


Before Dark


We talk before touching, a blanket island
on the grass, the sky around us all sides:

the names of our losses, the approximations
of our wishes, every lived moment current

and I hear you name your resistance, say
you’re not cut out for the kind of agreement

I have reserved my ghost for all my years
as you measure the distance between the spot

you rest your eyes and the spot you choose
for your hand under the back of my shirt,

there, lying on that blanket together that tip
of spring, atop the stripe, my mammal skin,

your attention, your hand the fact I remember,
your hand the fact that matches us, if we let it,

that pulls us front to front until we are pressed
as close to each other as it’s possible to get.
 

Rae Gouirand

Rae Gouirand is the author of two collections of poetry, Open Winter (winner of the Bellday Prize, Bellday Books, 2011) and Glass is Glass Water is Water (forthcoming from Spork Press in 2018). She is currently at work on her third collection and a work of nonfiction. 

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2017