Anniversary

Joanna Solfrian
| poetry

 

The outcomes of our love lie in their bed,
sleep-tangled and yeast-warm from the guitar.
The stars overwhelm their dome, the mangroves
drip their branches down into roots and thus

over years walk the earth. You & I have walked as well,
more quickly—there is bread to buy, and rent.
Our hearts have few bruises but they are
deeply blue. Who knows the occasion for upending

the silence, for saying yes to all—yes
to the dried-up dreams in the bedroom corner,
the unborn dreams in the wood-thrush wing,
the sacred dreams of our love, whom God twice-

molded around bones in the manner of rivers?
Whatever the occasion, there was one,
and I, the lunatic, press it now and again
to your cheek, for you to carry in your dreams.

Joanna Solfrian lives and works in New York City. Her first poetry collection, Visible Heavens, was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye for a Wick First Book Prize. Her second collection, The Mud Room, is due from MadHat Press in 2019.

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