A Yellow Leaf
Ariana Reines
It’s shivering
Like a little lady rattling her bell
Calling for tea
Quivering in the old style
There’s a red light in Boston
At the close of day
Like the red light of idiocy
All along the bricks
Of Harvard Yard & a blue
Sky so hard & irradiated
In the way of old cinema
Whose screens
Reflect the pops & black
Rot spattered
As though it were something
Perhaps nice
As if to say please
No extra charge
Please
Visualize now the idea of your blind spot
I will even do it for you
As the physical reel unspools
& unspools & you blink
In a dark
Room narrow with shadows
Narrow shadows like avant-gardes
It was a dream that woke up
The Fall
It really is something
A sick feeling
Like stopping lying
A dangerous feeling
Like giving up trying to live as though you were otherwise
As though my mouth could water along the split
Waistlines of all the apricot colored squashes
As though the real pumpkins, horns
Of plenty at my hearth
& in my wealth, my death
Were visibly grinning
Thru the rosebud lip of womanhood
Behind which all the women
I really am (they claim)
Hide behind my face & do their flips
Behind my teeth
In the red darkness there
In my potions
In my chemicals
In the mouth I never use
In my poisonous mouth
About this poem
“‘The worlds revolve like ancient women / Gathering fuel in ancient lots,’ wrote T.S. Eliot. At times I have the peculiar sense these revolving women, like worlds, are seething in my blood: It’s exhilarating and unbearable. But then you write a poem and you’re fine.” – Ariana Reines
About Ariana Reines
Ariana Reines is the author of “Mercury” (Fence Books, 2011). She has taught at University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University; and Tufts University, and she now works as an astrologer. She lives in Queens, N.Y.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2015 Ariana Reines. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
