Harvest

We rode the fields into the woods
the path was moist and the grass
beginning to turn, all the green
will be blonde by October

There was a stench about the expanse of space
that smelled like harvest, like a warmth
beneath cool cotton

Strange thistle grow up
their spiny beauty stark
against meaty leaves

Forward with Salomeh, up
and down with the rise
of the forest before us

My body rocked and I remembered
my pubic bone pressed to the saddle
tail high

Her veins were like a web pulsing
under a tight coat that shined
when a faint light passed
through the heavy clouds

I traced her blood along her neck
and heaving chest, across her girdled
belly and watched it smooth over
her haunches

The memory came back with a scent
of a sweet decay, apples rotting
below their browning trees and the reins
fell in palms like dreaming

My feet shook in the stirrups till
I pressed hard, clamping my legs
around her, she felt me cling and took me

Knees to leather I hugged her, kept my head
down with hers and watched the fields
disappear from her warm mane

In the woods she scraped my calves and
shoulders on dry birch, I saw us reflected
in a studánka and she cantered home

But this smell has left me with a yearning
I cannot name, something musty and dark
and full with the need to create

Blue Wine

I want you to decorate my neck
with the wine of pomegranates
sticky and sweet, like the fruit
cracked on pavement
tree heavy

You say the moment I stop smiling
is the moment my face is pressed
into the pillow

You danced with me while
I held an empty can of tomatoes
your stubble on my neck, the serrated
tin in my hand

Its true that you leave afterwards,
saying something about your dog

We waded fields of fallen leaves
leaped rivers and lay under the wall
of the cemetery tossing pines

I might be alive again, now
that I have watched my
shadow drown and I’ve walked
the road to heaven and
was able to turn round
was able to wake up

You’re back with your dog, taking
your clothes off again, lips cold
like the thin skin on an autumn apple

After you leave I scrape the red
seeds from the cutting board
watching how porous
wood can be
Would not, could not, washed away

The veins on my wrist are blue like
the dark sea over which I travel
floating above raging waves
and shaking my hands free

I imagine far on the other side, there
will still be a bridge back

Short Story

That’s it. Its over. It must be.
She thought, wiping her brow with the back of her cold hand. The train was steaming. Outside a wet slush lay on the tracks, not quite winter, not still fall.
She had kissed him better than before. A dart of passion and longing that only leaving can achieve. She had never liked kissing him. His thin winter lips, red and chapped, bore the mark of his otherwise well hidden anxiety. He tucked his bottom lip behind the two white plastered teeth he lost during hockey years before. These small indents left on his lip reminded her of a rabbit, quite fitting- as he identified the communist flats where he lived as rabbit cages, or králíkárna.
Now her hands were too warm and she mopped them on her tweed trousers, careful to hide the chipping polish she would have to redo before school in the morning. Few towns traced the way back to the village where she taught. Most of the journey was a wash of dark fields, which during the short light of November revealed only a gray grass with the occasional illumination of lingering yellow leaves.
She didn’t know if it was the train or nerves that shook her hands, she chose the former and refused to look down when the train made its first stop at the few and sparkling lights in Vysočany.
She managed a few haggard breaths, and thought of his- always milky.
They had said goodbye halfway into the train, somehow she had made it on board with the whistle. If she had been alone she knew she would never have made it. They pulled apart; but before “čao” could pass her lips her gut turned and she considered, this might be it; it must.
So again she pressed her mouth to his. And now watching the lights become less and less frequent she realized that he had been thinking, go get on the train. His kiss empty, confident he would see her again.