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Before the Deployment

He kisses me before he goes. While I,
still dozing, half-asleep, laugh and rub my face

against the sueded surface of the sheets,
thinking it’s him I touch, his skin beneath

my hands, my body curving in to meet
his body there. I never hear him leave.

But I believe he shuts the bedroom door,
as though unsure if he should change his mind,

pull off his boots, crawl beneath the blankets
left behind, his hand a heat against my breast,

our heart rates slowing into rest. Perhaps
all good-byes should whisper like a piece of silk—

and then the quick surprise of waking, alone
except for the citrus ghost of his cologne.

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of four poetry collections, including most recently Red Army Red (TriQuarterly Books, 2012) and Stateside (TriQuarterly Books, 2010). She is director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House and an associate professor of creative writing at Washington College, where she edits the national literary journal, Cherry Tree.

Occasion

Themes

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More by this poet

Sun Salutations with Betrayal and Departure

Although this room is full of moving,
sweating people—all of us lunging forward
or folding ourselves in tangled shapes,
obedient to Sanksrit names we’re told
mean “mountain,” “plank,” “dog”—
downward facing, I feel a sudden anger.
After, I talk with a woman.
For years I’ve called her a friend.
We lean damp against the mirror.
If there were a Sanskrit name for what I am
to her, it would be following flower,
the loyalty of a blossom that opens
beside its colleague on the branch.
We talk of our work. And I sense, the way
spines know the limits of their curvature,
that she has lied to me.

Jehanne Dubrow

2017

Syllabus for the Dark Ahead

Throughout this course,
we’ll study the American
landscape of our yard, coiled line

of the garden hose,
muddy furrows in the grass
awaiting our analysis,

what’s called close reading
of the ground. And somewhere
something will yip in pain

perhaps, a paw caught in a wire,
or else the furred and oily
yowling of desire.

And flickering beyond the fence,
we’ll see the slatted lives
of strangers. The light

above a neighbor’s porch
will be a test of how we tolerate
the half-illumination

Jehanne Dubrow

2017

Homeport

Even on weekends the cruiser
would shudder, flicker spaces
with a redorange blink,

then a gasket crack or a valve stick shut
as if by weather or malicious hands,
the engine room home

of all catastrophe.

Jehanne Dubrow

2015

Poems

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Before the Deployment

More by this poet

Sun Salutations with Betrayal and Departure

Syllabus for the Dark Ahead

Homeport

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