THREE POEMS BY DZVINIA ORLOWSKY
First Rain
In the dark basement, someone
elbowed me hard through the cloud
of my cotton candy dress.
The first heavy rain was about to fall.
Plastic swans wouldn’t glide on a paper tablecloth,
their backs filled with salty peanuts.
There was cake, candles easily snapped,
flames escaping toward the ceiling.
Why was everyone leaving?
no stopped music yet, no last chairs.
Inherited
probably an emptied showcase
liquor cabinet
lit from inside,
a laboriously hand-painted egg
displayed like a portrait
fragile, vacant—
a pinhole, still in tact, to blow into.
If I Can Feel the World Tonight
I won’t
force myself
to love
myself
but rather the spare stars
above the hospital’s parking garage.
*all from Convertible Night, Flurry of the Stones, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2008.
42milespress.com 