AMIE WHITTEMORE

On Blue

Cool and damp, the mood arrives,
                                    lit from within.  Like the color

a pearl dreams clamped in its shell: husky,
                                    swan-feathered, full of chimney smoke.

It sinks into my limbs and winds its synonyms
                                    like cotton around each bone:

nevermind, sleep tight, missing you, come home.

The color of Tuesday and tremulous,
                                    the color of remembering

a sweater you wore the day
                                    someone let you go. Color of

old t-shirts and bruises, lampshades
                                    and winter air. It leaves a mark.

It withdraws, a cloud of bats into a cave. 

Ex-Husband Nocturne

What brings me home to myself?
Not him dancing, not my hand

on his chest where part of me still broods.
I’m a little drunk on hibiscus and ginger.

Someday, I’ll be dust and zero,
a horse with a curtsy in their hoof.

The old carousel in my heart has long stilled.
The planets are post-hope as are the common

stars-of-bethlehem winking beneath
an unleafed oak. Wine has a first lesson

and a fifth. The paper cup he kept folding
turned into a shy swan. What of this tongue

and its need to say home over and over?
I cup his scent between my palms like a moth.

Amie Whittemore (she/her) is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Nest of Matches (Autumn House Press). Her chapbook, Hesitation Waltz, is forthcoming from the Midwest Writing Center. She was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her poems have won multiple awards, including a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, and her writing has appeared in Blackbird, Colorado Review, Terrain.org, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Eastern Illinois University and lives in Illinois.