after Alex Dimitrov’s “Love”
I love waking up without an alarm.
Prairie-coloured tea, milk and honey.
The first bumblebee vibrating the crocuses.
Earthworms & their five hearts.
Being barefoot, all the windows of my cells open.
Yellow warblers. Spring, a memo in their beak.
I love the country in mud season, red
furrows in potato fields. Stroking
fuzzy magnolia buds & pussy willows.
Euphemisms & asterisms, French flaps & wide margins.
Sharpening pencils, the tulle skirts of their shavings.
The sound of my love’s razor, rat-tat-tat-tat
against the sink—a flicker beak on repeat.
Sliding vinyl out of sleeves, lowering the needle
on Freedom Suite. Friends who fall asleep
at parties. People who see me
at my worst and still love me. How
rain falls without any warning. Dashing
with you under an awning. Pronking
down the street like an antelope in sneakers
that singular week when the city leafs out.
— from Juniper Volume 7, Issue 3