The Moment a Husband Stops Being a Husband and Starts
Being a Black and White Photograph of a Husband
You were imagining little mountains
in the soap bubbles in the bathroom sink
all summer long and you forgot you were a leopard,
meant to spot everything.
More darkness every day.
You wouldn’t know when, exactly,
he flew,
what he smelled in the you-less air
or what he held in his mouth that tasted like river
stones
and bloodied knees.
What does a dancer say to an engineer,
one New Hampshire cabin too late,
that gypsy memory
and wishful thinking
have not already said?
Lynn Schmeidler’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous literary magazines, including Boston Review, Fence, Comstock Review, and White Stag; as well as various anthologies, including Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books (Minor Arcana Press), Mischief, Caprice and Other Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press), Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed (Parlor Press), and Bared (Les Femmes Folles Books). Her chapbook, Curiouser & Curiouser, won the 2013 Grayson Books Chapbook Contest.
