Jill Mceldowney: June 2018 Poet of the Month

Levade

I know the name of the first horse I own

is prophecy for the way I will die. 

Are you that horse—

all the keys on a piano 

played at once,

half child-half eaten 

apple? Your teeth mark my future: 

beaten water,

the rush imbedded swan, 

radio waves—

rising, striking, rising,

struck

hive of

glass

bees, 

woman  

face down in the water. 

Now I feed you from my own palm, 

a demonstration of faith.

Thaumatrope  

When I say love

I mean I can’t

stay here—

not like this

where he can’t control

his fists, 

my fists,

where we are frantic

on the confused minute hands of time.

I mean my hands shake all day. 

God is not a sensible watchmaker. 

I can’t say what to the day’s stutter,

ask it if we are still friends. 

It unnails my body, 

the doorframe for him to cross

busted stars, 

throwing elbows, love as resistance 

but not always

to fuck on the lid of a closed piano. 

They’ll never show sex

in silent movies. 

I spread salt

in perfect line across a threshold—

he who means me harm

cannot cross—but

it’s like how he promises to leave. 

Instead, he never leaves.

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Jill Mceldowney is the author of the chapbooks Kisses Over Babylon (dancing girl press 2016) and Paradise Woods (forthcoming. She is a cofounder and editor of Madhouse Press. Her previously published work can be found in journals such as Vinyl, the Sonora Review, Fugue, Whiskey Island and other notable publications.