how gently
the world unfolds me
around the edges
of my life
i hear the
sublime beauty purring
in the simplest
of things
the leaves of your eyes
your stubby fingernails
your green scent
i have dog-eared
all the pages
of our shared days
to keep you near
FIRST POEM
this is how
love makes invisible marks
on the vivid heart
beyond the heart,
how our hallelujah blood
hallows, --o joy—everything!
two of us evolving to a single
legs-arms-necks-lips knotwork
passion of starved skin,
these hands
an untimid touch
these breasts was pink ever so pink?
i am drawn and colored
everywhere by your love-
artistry
eyes become sighs and
breathe yes,
our story still plays inside me
nothing but you, eyes like
springtime
even your homely feet wear
my love stamped into their
soles
from the ancestors to me to you,
glorious day of days! is any day!
holding dearly you
inside it
j. pratt-walter, 2/13/2024
make
the heart
everything
passion
pink-colored
artistry
sighs
yes
nothing
but you
love
glorious
dearly
you
j. pratt-walter 2/14/24
“Chess--I know how to play,
but not how to win.”
-Overheard
at a restaurant
The rules of this chess flew like circling hawks,
landing here and there when invoked
or hovering above, ready to assert themselves
as needed until the game was won.
But the game was for other people,
the pretty ones, the popular, me being
the wallflower shuffling like an abandoned cat
at the margin of the high school dance
throbbing in the gym after a football game,
the slippery eel of self-doubt hooked in my throat.
The playbook for this chess was not in my library.
I suffered outside the flirt game, and even more
for actual romance: prom, his arms encircling my waist,
mine curled around his neck in that longed-for
slow dance, low lights and music pushing, pushing lips
into kisses, the extravagant touching claimed by others
who knew how to win that game.
These days I play solo chess with no rules
but my own. I’m still
that strange wallflower
but I know how to walk alone, I give myself permission
to dance. I plow and
seed my own land,
I mule along outside of
that old game.
The regrets clank on in a black alley inside me
with neither welcome nor map. But maybe that’s me
discovering another way to win.
J. Pratt-Walter (c) 2022
