Yesterday was National Poetry Month

[brigdh]

Manhattan Valley Lynn Melnick

Who am I if not outside, a blizzard and borrowed
but hardly noticed, a drizzle. Let's look at this objectively.
I am always cold. Every step is streetwater, spell

surrounds the building. It must be noticed, to wail out
sirens grandly, to scarlet a sky this stern and dreary,
from black to black to plum. Lightning has let me live

one more storm. It's embarrassing, for God's sake, how I stay.
Here in our hollow, the gourds grow impossibly up,
waiting for a comeback. Tell me what this downcast means

and I will tell you where I've run from, a street
with strains of summer, a room that cannot hold us in its grave
drapery. I know you so well here; I keep always in

the same arrangement, lolling extravagant, sinful, buried
in possession. This is lucky and lucky isn't what it used to be,
for either of us. Most times I am too unbraced to bear it,

quite soprano and flung. Where is the hand at my waist,
and the dancing? Not some tricked-out voodoo,
but what's all around me. I miss you, you can't even imagine.

Sometimes I bite to bleeding; I need things on a grander scale.
There are rules, which mean it can't be this cozy
forever. Hat on the bed, shoes on the table. We are doomed.