by Jodi Barnes

I want to write a love poem

but we have Wallace Stevens’

Final Soliloquy.

 

If I had a more fitting way

to say I love you

how would that change

the shawl we’ve made,

our lucky poverty,

our god, imagination.

 

Or the fact we’ll die

likely one before the other,

one left to live off the pabulum

of memory, the other blind

to the light of evening.

 

I’d rather make a dwelling

without words. Here,

now.