Other Evenings
I stole a coin to throw
into the fountain so I
could wish for the moon
to return to me,
though I knew
it would be different, though
I knew it wouldn’t follow
me into the bedroom
after I had been crying. So
I disappear again into
another front yard where the trees
look like seaweed, leaves repeat
Freyjas in the branches, you can see
the bowls of milk
the neighbor put out. I cannot
wait for the beginning of the dream,
the night is whole and leaking,
everyone I have ever loved
waits patiently for me on the other side of
knowing which lobe of my brain
pearls over a memory of forest.
Streetlights fall charcoal, Cassiopeia
is on fire with
Cassiopeia, I thought so, too. Houses cut
into little bits of sky.
Someone is in pain
and I know it. I know it.
Lindsey Warren is a recent graduate of Cornell University’s MFA program. She is currently at Cornell not as a student, but as a freshman writing instructor and a creative writing teacher. She has been published in The Fox Chase Review, Broadkill Review, Icarus Down, Secret Lovers Press, Rubbertop Review, Marathon Review and Hobart. She has had an excerpt of a long poem “Incantation” on display as an exhibit at the Biggs Museum in Dover, Delaware. She is the recipient of a Delaware Division of the Arts Fellowship and has been a finalist for the Delaware Literary Connection Prize and the Joy Harjo Prize.