a poem i like

fable

by dean young

He was bending her over the table
then he had to write something down
about airplanes.
Her own compliant demesne
was full of leopards,
partly accounting for their happiness.
She could finish what he partly said.
A giant cherry on a giant spoon
held forth across a snowy field.
Another sculpture calls it a crow,
is how a crow might see itself
if it was good at algebra
instead of another symbol of death.
If she adjusts the shower
she becomes a rainbow
and he's always wanted to sleep with a rainbow
but if you become a rainbow
you'd better know how to stop being a rainbow
if you expect to get anything done.
More than strawberries, more than doo wop
he loved her to distraction. Funny phrase,
as if love wasn't the whole point
so distraction from what?
They each knew one suicide
but never had them over to dinner the same night.
They each had a scar through an eyebrow.
Her mother those last months
screamed when anyone tried to wash her hands.
They met by accident, both avoiding
the pool party, separate wattages
becoming one luminosity,
separate epicenters one adagio.
So that's how they got on the ark,
skeletons dancing together.