by Kevin Heslop
There’s a sappy syntax,
lover:
nothing’s out of place.
Every image shares
in the languid, familiar burning
of the sky
alien vowels so instant
they shimmer. Ash,
I’ll play around a bit:
scatter-brained, tense-changing,
rhythmically-awkward poem, Ash;
Ash, spectacles and leather jacket,
vivid lover, sweet poem, my cohesion.
And I’m sorry these are unfamiliar
terms, substituting
the disadvantage of the penultimate grasp
for something easier:
you’ve got a love poem;
I’ve got an internal function,
and I hope this affirms your sense
of the rhyme we are.
And I’ll leave it there, for the moment,
and hope I haven’t said too much.
— from Juniper Volume 2, Issue 3