INSTEAD OF A VICTORIAN NOVEL I WRITE A VICTORIAN POEM
There is always a man,
slight and dark-socketed, standing by a window,
gazing at the mute and luminous moon.
Always the room is chandeliered,
warm at the center, and the conversation falls
in glitters like snowflakes and their infinitesimal knives.
The man wishes to speak to someone.
Always in the room there is a woman
radiating from her bones
who wants nothing but the man’s loneliness
projected onto her palms.
Most often, neither speaks.
The woman remains on her spot of circumference,
her constructed worlds trembling in her breast,
and the man remains at the window,
slinging his losses at the moon.
Who can advise these two?
The moon, from her judicial height,
is the only one with any sense,
and everyone knows the moon can do nothing.
—from Rattle #43, Spring 2014
Tribute to Love Poems
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Joanna Solfrian: “I write to impose a structure: Take that, chaos, quatrains! I write to disturb a structure: O toddler glazed with television, I pen you sniffing a wolf’s maw. Most days I don’t understand the reason I’m writing.” (website)
