by Christopher Citro

 

By the bed and last thing at night, first thing

in damp daylight, I consult. On rare occasion

I might add. Making love in the long grass

near the river, a vulture’s shadow crept across

her face while I was in the middle of it,

and I looked away. That went near the top.

Those afternoons with everything crashing

around me, watching through café windows—

when I stepped outside, the smell of wet streets

and dripping trees. I did not inhale enough.

Years later, trying to recall it is like reading

through water. So I’ll have to forgive myself

for that, for letting the domino rally lull me

asleep. I saw a woman on the street yelling

at a man who did not step back. He opened

his arms, I’m a lover not a fighter, and hugged her.

Both drunk as September. Most of October,

me forgiving myself for being surprised.

Christopher Citro’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in Salamander, Cream City Review, Los Angeles Review, Southeast Review, The Minnesota Review, Poetry East, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. He is a past recipient of a Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award for poetry. Recent broadsides of his poetry are available from Architrave Press, Broadsided, and Thrush Press. Christopher is currently completing an MFA in poetry at Indiana University. Find him at christophercitro.com.