"My man's got nothing but leaky boats. / My daughter, writer, sits and floats."

Poetry Monday comes round again. Sorry 'bout missing last week -- holiday and all that.

Another Lullaby for Insomniacs, A. E. Stallings

Sleep, she will not linger:
She turns her moon-cold shoulder.
With no ring on her finger,
You cannot hope to hold her.

She turns her moon-cold shoulder
And tosses off the cover.
You cannot hope to hold her:
She has another lover.

She tosses off the cover
And lays the darkness bare.
She has another lover.
Her heart is otherwhere.

She lays the darkness bare.
You slowly realize
Her heart is otherwhere.
There's distance in her eyes.

You slowly realize
That she will never linger,
With distance in her eyes
And no ring on her finger.


(Stallings is, as I may have mentioned before, the poet my age I most admire. See also this.)

---L.

Subject quote from "Well, spring overflows the land," Lorine Niedecker.