AMY BILODEAU

for you 

i bound slowly 
into the terrible crowded structures

i vow preparedness 
like every devout creator 

let all the buzzing brains that see me
or don’t
make the complex cloth we might reason with

drenched in an old remorse 
i will not allow language’s luscious 
to leave us bare

& the smiling air denies me

in later sleep we name it
“making lemons with the lightscape”
& it is a tame familiar

like the closed eye

of the sleeping animal

please give us a sequential paradise

here the little t-rex arms of the cartoon demon
are in conversation

with the splintered barn in the photograph

with the spaceship & the leaf collection
in the comic boy

in the reincarnated lyric in the echoing church

called “lecture me dreamly”

cold-wired fastidious function

i function dearly

i promise this rainfall

deeply

labor day

the boy with red light

beaming off his chest

my small bored miner

—a perfect time

for grilling

& too all winter—

my dear boy

hour of nonchalance & the din

the world’s boy

& all his teeth

laboring to come of age

—button mushrooms in tin foil—

injecting conversation

—he is sleepful then

of lungs & wistful—

we bewildered kin

by vows are watching

our timelines blur

with a beautiful present weight

the bottle of wine defends its actual

desire has produced

this after-dark viewing

my tired exile

his bald slashed face

—warm husband

stays late

in my strange company—

i could take every virtue in

like a lake

& wake up somewhere else

—we are so sold

on these confessings—

plus almost rain

i have come back to the hot beloved threshold

spangled in danger

to give you

this kind suspense

possible of cheerful willing ponies but

“warm” here wears the sad slow face

of a sitcom starring nothing but sloths

inscribed nostalgic shrine

come comfort

you can twitter

delicately & unharmed 

as you like

like “layla” “layla” i long

to be drawn by

this room’s hazy green self-

titled “desire” &

so the mountains

generous shrug

her rugged shoulders 

snow

this strange envelope

of consuming

—terrible abundance 

of avalanche—

& name it “easy street”

or maybe “nature” i

incite you & then

don’t show

but now i take

account of the burnished

autumn in your counting

the lavish hyperbole

ok?

i was hungry 

hovering 

the elephants miss you

even more than their shoes

Amy Bilodeau’s work appears or will appear in Connotation Press, DMQ Review, RHINO, Two Hawks Quarterly, and others. Her full-length manuscript was a finalist for the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry, and her chapbook manuscript was a semi-finalist in the Black Lawrence Press Black River Chapbook Competition. She lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.