Flutter
Poetry Journal
Proposal
She is cigarette ash
and Stoli vodka,
jeans carefully, carelessly
torn, sexy as photographers are
but she only lets me touch her
in the dark. First meeting: college
seminar. First kiss: smoky bar.
First dinner date: three hours late
she brings me a gas station rose.
It’s our last semester
but we just met
on the brink of everything,
staring dumbly at each other.
Beneath a catalpa tree, she asks
“Do you want to get married?”
“Of course not,” I say, flattered
and torn. Impossibly long pods
crack under my feet.
She moves to New York, city
of elegant claustrophobia.
Smoke stains her bare leased walls.
White leather jacket flung
on desk chair, corner of gray stone building
through the window, I know
it’s over as soon as I arrive.
Up on the roof, she offers me the view
as if it is hers to give.
“No matter what happens,”
she says, “the city will always
take you back.” The stores never close—
they carry all kinds of flowers.
You can have anything
you want, for a price.
~ Kathryn Good-Schiff holds a BA from Hampshire College, where she studied creative writing and environmental studies, and an MFA from Goddard College, where she served as Associate Editor of the Fall 2007 Pitkin Review. Kathryn's poems have appeared in Kalliope, Quay, SNReview, and Pank. She also writes reviews for www.artid.com. Kathryn lives in Western Massachusetts and blogs about poetry and the creative process at www.dragonsmeow.blogspot.com.
