A native of Salt Lake City, Utah, Ariana-Sophia M. Kartsonis received an M.F.A. from the University of Alabama and is currently completing a Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati. Her work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Florida Review, Glimmer Train, Margie, and other journals. She edits the online journal Words on Walls. Her book Intaglio was the winner of the 2005 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University Press.
Lathe
We were festooned with smoke and fire, with electrical storms.
Afterflow and math, death
in a ruby red bombshell dress.
We suffered from air loss and cabin pressure.
We suffered fevers of unknown origins.
We suffered farewells, divinities
sugary and ethereal. We suffered
the disillusion of afternoon turned
like buttermilk to a dusk
rich as hand cream,
the lotioned light
turned to lather
and we washed away.
The gutters received us like messiahs
then sent us on our way.
A chalk drawing of dissolution,
A cake of soap diminishing,
a cough drop in the rain.
We were breaking down like an old horse or a stain.
Recalling your skin of hard candy coffee-flavored.
Recalling your hands like pulled bulbs and the tension of roots.
Recalling those years like a faulty auto part or a hazard.
Turn this curve
the mothwing cul-de-sac
with intention
and following some through. Or turn away.
We're turning like sonnets
or inebriated dancers, we're turning
like milk and seasons
sour.
Directions to Aftermath Avenue:
Turn to the little yellow house
where we lived a half-dozen winters ago
The Centipede Cafe we called it,
for the false eyelash insects
that skittered on floorboards.
Turn in the driveway, to where the road circles back.
The maple key in your palm that won't turn the lock,
turn a day or a leaf
or a thing
turn back.