monday poem #235: Eric Leigh, "Origami Heart"
I've been waiting for Eric Leigh to publish a book ever since he won the Nation Poetry Prize back in 2006; Harm's Way was published in 2010, but I didn't come across it until a couple of weeks ago. It was worth the wait. It's a sharp-edged, beautiful book of poems about family and love and loss, rural childhood and urban adulthood, country bars and drag queens and life with HIV. Highly, highly recommended.
Origami Heart
First, a ring from nothing
but a dollar bill and dime, spare change
set in pleats of green.
Then Easter lilies from cocktail napkins,
swans from movie stubs.
I should have known right there
he would bring the fever
of his hands to my every crook
and crease-bend of elbow,
back of knee-until I gave,
buckled into a fold, the flesh turning
ornament, the body a gift.
- Eric Leigh
from Harm's Way
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
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Origami Heart
First, a ring from nothing
but a dollar bill and dime, spare change
set in pleats of green.
Then Easter lilies from cocktail napkins,
swans from movie stubs.
I should have known right there
he would bring the fever
of his hands to my every crook
and crease-bend of elbow,
back of knee-until I gave,
buckled into a fold, the flesh turning
ornament, the body a gift.
- Eric Leigh
from Harm's Way
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth