by Matthew Hittinger
I wish I could say the words form
a pattern—that they return each
spring on a day like this—the sun
scours winter off brick and mind
flicks to Persephone-Punxsutawney—
Osiris-Jesus—imagination figments
we construct realities around, god
and goddess created in our own
image given power by our worship
death by our forgetting. Let us not
then forget moments like last night—
a black cat crossed our path as we
walked across the Plateau. Lady
Bast I whispered for no cat—black
orange or leopard—is unlucky
even if your building skips floor
13 so that you are not 18
but 17 stories. Look—that
same black cat crosses the gravel-
strewn yard behind the Armor
Manoir below, hotel where this
story one October began—
dancing on the third floor of club Sky
the night O won his Nobel Prize—
cab ride and stair-stumble sigh
and the old late shift Quebecker
with the bad toupee who handed
over the key to my room—blessed
us with spread hands, a shoulder
shrug—smile-warned us the walls
were thin when all you wanted
was to see inside the building you
gaze down upon each day—to see
inside a man you had just met.
Let these words stall time a bit
longer—let us worship the vignette—
four plates broke the front hall’s
wall—a pear, a pear with one bite,
a pear with two—three ebony seeds—
forever never long enough for you
to stroke my nape’s gold curls—to fall
asleep to even breathing near my ear—
Matthew Hittinger is the author of The Masque of Marilyn (GOSS183, 2017), The Erotic Postulate (2014) and Skin Shift (2012) both from Sibling Rivalry Press, and four chapbooks including the forthcoming Thought * Frost * Voodoo (Harbor Editions). Named a Debut Poet by Poets & Writers Magazine, his work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, and has been featured on Verse Daily, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, and the Library of Congress’s The Poet and The Poem.
Emerge Literary Journal 