Poetry
Late October
Judith Chatowsky
By the last of October
green oranges had yellowed
and the sea was cool and no color
no more than the air was a color
and I had worn my hair short as a boy's
since the eighteenth of June and some nights
we were up past dawn taking our coffee
from mugs without handles while
the sun rose in the sky hot
and white as a moon.
One night I lay on your concrete floor
cool and spread like the Madonna about to give
birth as you pulled my blouse slowly from the waist
of my jeans and often I would trace flickers of light
off your one lazy eye as it shuddered
then stilled in that moment just
before sleep.