© 2004  Alexander Nowalk

Daylight Savings

and I'm glad they're not awake
to hear the clunk junk clunk
of ice sliding into the empty cup I'm
preparing to fill with water because the sangria
ran empty about an hour ago.

I'm glad they're asleep already-
two curled up on the sofa, their heads at opposite
ends like sentries and their feet
together, Ashlei crunched
on to the love seat her legs spliced,
one flat footed on the ground the other
arched golden over the end arm rest.

I'm glad they're not awake.  The sound
of the ice is mine; the smell of cigarettes
on my hands, burnt bitter herbs is mine too;
daylight savings is mine.
I'll have the memory of a
lost hour folded into normal time
where others only remember going to their
beds and waking-
still tired.

Palindrome

My grandfather held me high:
he was tall then, like a ladder,
and sinewy from years of manual
labor that my generation
hears about in tales of decades
lost below technological dust.

As I grew we passed each other like cars
on opposite sides of the road.

He used a quilt to cover his legs,
once proud and brazen but melted
down by an enduring furnace.

At the end he enjoyed impersonations:
he imitated the gray-yellow sponge
I used to bathe him,
his pink gums pretended to be
clumsy like a baby's fingers,
and I was a weekday church bell:
face unrung when I changed
and wiped him clean again.

It took six of us
and we couldn't hold him as high
as he held me, but we rocked
him gently in the green breeze of the
afternoon before we lowered him down
making room for me.

At the top of the Prudential Building with a girl I loved

The motif at our highschool prom was
a Night in the Garden.
We fell in love because we held hands,
or was it the other way around?

That was three years ago,
and we stopped holding hands.
I like to claim we need them
for more entertaining activities now,
though not together.

Tonight's theme is Collegiate Drunks
and a View of Pointillist Boston
painted in firefly blood.

People carry around wine
and glasses of rum to emblemize
the knowledge they've been poured.
The talk even dares to linger on politics
before it skips back to frats and
parties like a child offering naïve
insight before returning to jump rope.

On the dance floor guys hold
their ground, grinding back into
girls like pairs of stags, locked in battle,
but when she and I dance, its all smiles
and laughs; even the way she moves,
her hips and her thighs reminds me
of giggles and snorts.

She dances with her friends.  I lean
on a wall watching the variety
of vixens who move with the music
auditioning for exotic, tribal theater.

Everyone heads to their individual
dorms and apartments for after-hour
commitments - awkward
boasts in high school and only when in the safety
of your gender.  Legs tingle
warmed by promises from alcohol and
enticed by the hands of dates
looking to keep scheduled appointments.

All work is copyrighted property of Alexander Nowalk.

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