Two Poems

JOEY KINGSLEY

​Kinds of Light 

Let me begin with the glittering stars. 

Outside an abandoned garage in Whitehall, NY, 

            the moon saws the windshield, 

                         catching the pine-scented air freshener 

trembling from the mirror 

                                    as I dial the radio to a station 

where all night lovers in the Midwest 

            phone in dedications, 

                         their voices thick with longing. 

Last night, I lifted my hands 

           off the wheel, closed my eyes & sped downhill, 

the road rushing up to meet me. 

                         I imagined you were there, 

           watching the white lines tick down.

Now, I lever the seat back until I am

           nearly horizontal, 

                                    watching the lonely 

late-night shoppers trigger the sliding doors 

                         of a low-rent supermarket 

across the street. A blinking sign, 

           a deserted lot. 

                        Everything dead. 

                                    I wonder if states away 

your heart contracts & quickens 

                                                like the wings 

           of a hummingbird, 

arrhythmia fluttering until dawn

                        as you chase whatever dark 

swims in you. 

           Last winter, you leaned against the bridge 

above the river’s vein carving the city 

                        in two, as close to me as that 

                                                thrifted faux fur coat 

I breathed in— 

                        the trapped stench of Olay & hair spray— 

as you told me your wife was in love 

                        with someone else 

& I wanted to hold you all night 

                                                until you disappeared, 

                                     light enough to float like pine ash 

           to the rocks below. 

                       My voice slid sh sh sh over the icy pavement 

           as sleet began to blind the passing cars. 

As if holding on were an art, 

                       a chorus of yes & yes & yes,  

                                                then no, no, no, no. 

We cling to what we need until we don’t. 

                      When we jump 

dirt cracks underfoot. Even the grass cries 

           as it’s trampled. 

                                  If there were a way to step 

inside your mind, 

           I’d cast for ghosts.  

                      I think there must be two kinds of light: 

           one that glows inside an empty room 

left ajar at the end of a jet-black hallway 

                      & one that sputters, naked, 

                                                out in the open 

like a bare bulb 

           buzzing over a cement floor. 

Here, there is little light & along the shoulder, 

                                 a lone hitchhiker glides, 

           nearly invisible. In this remote town 

the gas tanks are blank & empty. 

                      Somewhere in the woods, an owl. 

           When the program ends, the news comes on. 

I turn the key. Tell me I’m going home. 

Palimpsest 

When I sharpen a blade, drawing it through 

            a diamond-edged V, 

                         metal grates like new love against an old marriage 

& I remember that once you lived with a woman 

           who I do not know

                         & though you wish your past were unmarked, 

a field without fences, 

           I know her face flips through your mind 

sometimes like a coin, two-sided. 

She breathes between us, proof that matter, 

                        what has been lost, 

           never disappears but finds another home, 

that sorrow & joy, 

                        like the twin stems of chromosomes, 

           can rise up through my skin like black-eyed 

poppies—stubborn, perilous, & beguiling

           in their red petticoats—& flutter at the mercy 

of what binds us. 

                       Don't think I don’t see her 

when you hold me.  

           Don’t think we’re totally free. 

When my grandfather died, my mother hid his ashes 

                       in a hummus container and carried him 

           around in her purse.

The truth is you will always hold her against you 

                       like this, as if she had died. 

           Tell me that the vowels of your name 

have a half-life, time to dissolve 

           into another element. 

                      The night swallows itself in the hips 

                                  of a wine glass. I pull my shawl 

across my face, blinded in the kitchen lights, 

                      & your figure, airbrushed, 

almost disappears. The blade gleams silver-sharp.  

          We split ourselves apart & cleave 

that half in half & then that half & the next. 

          Be cobalt for me. Be uranium. Be the body 

kept until it’s after-flame. 

                                 Let our feet stamp the dirt 

& our mouths make the air. 

JOEY KINGSLEY earned a BA in English from the College of the Holy Cross and an MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is currently a PhD student in English literature and lives in Rochester, NY. 

The Adirondack Review

WINTER 2016