a poem by alicia rebecca myers

Alas, his fears are well founded.
There is thunder and lightning in the sky.
-Vivaldi, The Four Seasons


At St. Bartholomew's After a Breast Biopsy


The longest day -- Summer Solstice -- daylight
bides. I learn that dusk will wane
sometime during the Second Movement.
Adagio in Fall, then darkness.
I am twenty-nine.

In the mural above the nave
Christ lifts his arms to an invisible
practitioner. He's suspended
in a weatherless sky. And that grey dove,
is she coming or going?

I think of the story of you
painting a comedian's apartment high
on cocaine, how you confused colors,
reversed walls and ceiling.
I didn't know you then.
I only know the sober god who kisses
my nipples each morning before walking dogs
for a living: a change, a benediction.



Originally published in Greener


Alicia Rebecca Myers's chapbook of poems, Greener, was released from Finishing Line Press in 2009. She has four poems in the current issue of Cream City Review, and a poem forthcoming in the Southern Poetry Anthology: Georgia. She is the Co-Editor of the online literary journal Clementine, and blogs about being a travel consultant and a poet at www.beccamyers.com.