after Agha Shahid Ali’s “Arabic” At springtime—Persian new year—we circle around the warmth of bonfires to chant, Give me your color, take back my sickly pallor. There is rebirth in this language. A groom exchanges vows with his Persian bride in a foreign tongue.
to the sea
or some lonely pond
or wherever it is
that swans go
Today I and the unhooded bird
that sits on my head
are looking in different directions,
Well since there’s still light walk around
stand on the porch
cup hands around eyes peering in
Laura Cesarco Eglin’s poem, “Makeover,” appears in Michigan Quarterly Review’s Summer 2019 issue. Blue lipstick in remembrance of days of intense cold of nails turning blue and lips to match when she’s tired she applies eyeshadow where the bags under her eyes should be, she
“Love/it was exactly like this/when, for the first time,/we stepped toward each other/like two people folding a bedsheet”