Afternoon After Suit
This afternoon after
the words come out
smells like cinnamon toast,
tacos and fried eggs,
sounds like the courage
it takes to say I love you
followed by a name,
to kiss like life was ending
followed by a name.
This afternoon is the urgency
of ripped off corner bookmarks,
the flash of a card trick
practiced for way too long,
a match derived from wrestling
while we wrestle with dignity
while we wrestle with truth.
Can’t you see us now
in our tight bodysuits?
And we have agility here,
not marked by agitation,
an agility that shows itself
after we take in all the fruits
and all the drinking.
Our intake is never downhearted,
but our resolve to tell it all
and to tell everything
seems plowed under
and often too soon parted.
Our determination is digested
in the bones of our chests,
gives our young and able hearts
a much useless rest.
And what is left after we swallow
isn’t for the worst
but it isn’t for the best.
We’ve been reading other people’s
books and knowing that history
becomes the future and our bookshelves
become flipbooks we see through,
our poems become refrains and hooks.
Our story runs together long like LMNOP
or short like RST.
And in this afternoon we resist
the bookend of the belly
and the bookend of the brain
and suck on the sweetness of lemons
and the bitterness of sugarcane.
- Amy Madison
