To get to you I bit the apple
at its loveliest spot, drawing the poison
out and into me. I lay in my glass box,
neither sleeping nor swooning, neither
half empty nor half full, every nerve
edged in black like a mourning letter.
What the doves call song I call grief; but
I waited.
Your charger found me first,
nosing at my coffin, transformed
from battle steed to foal by the scent
of apples. You swung the hinged lid
slowly: one last moment to fear
my heart’s desire, all my new kingdom
in your kiss.
—
Laura Cherry is the author of the collection Haunts (Cooper Dillon Books) and the chapbooks Two White Beds (Minerva Rising) and What We Planted (Providence Athenaeum). She co-edited the anthology Poem, Revised (Marion Street Press). Her work has been published in journals including Clementine Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review, Cider Press Review, and Hartskill Review.
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