Poverty of Songs
we sang once, when all I could sense
was the rise and fall of a split second’s
warmth before you stitch sounds to
the cadence of my sudden shyness;
I stopped because you did not ask why
I sang along, and because in your mouth,
a spittle of my fragile skin tasted dark,
the same way inky welt of sky stroked
slick rain on a long piping summer; now
many months later, I sit as a young widow,
lost to the final bow in your passing’s tribute,
singing hymns too great for my voice; naked
and wedged back into a poverty of our songs—
A Pushcart nominee, Lana is an author of two chapbooks forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press and Finishing Line Press, has had her poetry and fiction featured with over 180 journals, Chiron Review, Coe Review, Columbia Journal, Elohi Gadugi, Foundling Review, Fourth & Sycamore, Galway Review, Gravel Review, Harbinger Asylum, Literary Orphans, Lost Coast Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Quarterly, Roanoke Review, Sentinel Quarterly, and elsewhere, among others. She resides in the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps. https://www.facebook.com/niaallanpoe
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