Current Issue: Fall/Winter 2010

A Travel of Romance  
Gary L. McDowell

after Eric Fischl

Scene V

A half-tweed prayer, a one-off prayer,
and in her pockets, if she had them,
a driver’s license and three quarters worn smooth.  She’s no beggar, no slave
to an unpacked suitcase, to the fetal position
lit from behind like a dancer mid-barrel jump,
legs bent under him,
his head cocked in radio silence: confidence like that is true love’s
only competition.
It’s all symbols, this lurid human affair, and what we’re good for one day doesn’t
always carry over to the next, though
curling up under your sternum, peering through
your ribs like a crab, you might think otherwise,
you might think you can take away my heart.

 

Gary L. McDowell is the author of American Amen, which won the 2009 Orphic Prize for Poetry, and of two chapbooks, They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon, 2009) and The Blueprint (Pudding House, 2005).  He is the co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010). He lives in Portage, MI with his wife and young son, Auden.