in parentheses

Chris Lisieski is an attorney and a poet from all over: rural Appalachia; Yellow Springs, Ohio; Red Feather Lakes, Colorado; Boston; Pittsburgh; Charlottesville; Washington, D.C.; Albuquerque. He currently lives in Fresno, and will probably move again. He has one good dog, one other dog, and a multitude of rotating hobbies.

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Inamoratas

My true love with
your black gold red brown
locks swirling around your shoulders

or chopped bobbed permed wig
when you turn to the light your
blue brown green hazel

eyes flash like the glare
off a car windshield, 4 pm
at the pier, when it turns

out its your car, you’ve
finally arrived and I can
quit waiting and go back

to loving you. All I miss
is your ruddy porcelain olive ebony
skin against mine. Every

follicle, every sense, every
exuberance stands
attention when your

curvy skinny short tall
frame nestles close or folds
over in front of mine. I can’t

believe you’re mine. For the moment
your sweet spicy earthy musky
smell swells in my nostrils,

something gestates. Takes me
and takes root. I will never forget
your face or your name (I keep

a list of every pet
name you ever called me). Your
large pert small saggy

breasts press against my chest
as you kiss me soft hard
rushed patient timidly ferocious

I see think focus fixate on
stars hope dreams nothing
trees love mountains nothing.

I could lose
myself in your arms lips legs
between your trust in me

and your need for freedom. In your errata
and etcetera. Over and over, I say
I could never love just one

facet of you. All
I’ve ever wanted was a variety
of commitments. To make you

snort guffaw giggle smile
so I know you’re truly
happy safe trusting lovestruck

not leaving.

Whether We Both Seek Wonder

High desert winds kick up
and we’re eating our teeth
just to keep the sand out.
The mountains shadowing
the city in morning

turned luminous at dusk.
It’s when I play best.
Too early for insomnia, too late
for work. Transitions
are where beauty shakes

her hair loose. Burgeoning
love, blossoming grief. I hope
we are equal partners. Squinting
through the dust at the purpling
mountains, a jay calls wild names

above the dinge and the last heat
baking off the mesa. If I could open
my eyes, I’d see deer feeding
on the aspens. Things being
as they are, the only choice

is painless dark and waiting
for the storm to blow through
or today’s last wondrous rays,
grit and irritation coruscating magic.
I chose and now I’m waiting

to learn whether you will keep
wiping sand laden tears with me
while we gaze at regular old deer
doing workaday things, set aglow
by the radiant tricks of a fleeing sun.

Waking at Night in Camp After the Cicadas Have Gone to Sleep

It’s not just cicadas
other bugs thunder too

and your shoe
honk shoe breaths

rumble a distant peace
your mat not six inches

away, a million miles gone.
It’s the quietest

times of night
I am the most troubled.

Alone my dark thoughts
will think of me what they want,

a rusty nail propping
the window open

to sneak back in.
Broken glass in the grass

clumps around my feet.
It’s the quietest I’ll hear

until it’s all over, until
you and I are as outside

of time as the endless
cycle of the cicadas, hatching

and breeding and eating and dying.
And, sometimes, singing.

She Likes Flowers

She says she can’t hardly focus
anymore on hard and fast tasks,
which is why she likes the way
digitalis wiggles out of dirt,
the droop of sunflowers’ heavy late

summer seeds. Phlox cultivars bloom
at different times, she says, so there’s
always color if you want it. No matter
how gray the days will get. Paint balls shot
against an ashen tarp. I believe in her.

Growing things hold their own mystery
inside. Their beauty is for our benefit
only incidental. She belongs, with the flowers,
first to the bees, next to the ants and aphids.
Meanwhile, my head feels full

of dandelion puffs primed to blow
away at the next breath of hot air
from my chapped lips. I want to listen
to her stories late at night when sleep
sets down her guard. Fireflies phosphorece.

Rich smell of loam mixes with soft perfume.
I don’t know where she starts and the flowers
stop. I want to listen to my body. I want her
to hear my heart pounding at the possibilities,

our lives so brief-
ly unencumbered
in the inimitable space
of this garden bed.

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