Fall 2011, Volume 11

Poetry by Gregory Emilio

A Rubiyat

The hills like lomography prints,
a couple driving in Santa Ynez after a bottle
of unfiltered Chard.  The dusk–sun wrings its palms. 
Guts laze with triple–creme brie, apples, baguette. 
Cigarettes outstrip their breaths.
Old jazz radio & trellis
after trellis.  He parks
next to a two–pronged oak,
pisses among long grasses. 
Her hair lignifies along
the saddle of the tree. 
Is there need for story?  Maybe
her ember will sway the field aflame. 
Maybe his eyes will tincture the roads lily–white
till some doe wanders the wrong moment
of the blind highway.  Maybe we
won't be slaked without gristle
and the arrival of night. 
He lifts her like stemware,
hears a moist finger ringing
along its crystal rim; hears it 
in the olive-amber of her eyes. 
They were brown this morning, he marvels.
Let vine engender grape & grape convert to wine.
Sunlight , says she, it changes them.

 

 

 

BIO: Greg Emilio likes waiting tables, disappearing into the Sierra Nevadas, Sam Cooke, and cooking while watching cooking shows on TV.