Poet Island Press

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3 Poems by Allison Noël Seay

POSTED 2007-05-20 IN YOUNG WRITERS POEMS

Allison is a young talented writer out of the Writing Program at the University of North Carolina. She is currently Associate Editor at the "Greensboro Review".

THE NEWLYWEDS

He desired her most in summer—poolside, the wet
nape of her neck, a puzzle book damp on her towel.

When she lay down next to him, he startled her
with an ice cube at the small of her back.

The heat was as thick as grass. The ice melted
faster than she thought it would. Then,

there was no visible trace, only a marked absence
which became the place the sun felt most violent

which was, I see, the beginning of grief.

FEVER

The winter that kept my fever all season
was the winter I saw the neighbor girl’s body
being taken from the house.

               And who would have trusted
that girl murmuring in her sleep?
Who could know she felt she was drowning?
Who knew the sea-fear,
the airlessness?

               And she was with me
in my fever-dreams: she was the fever;
she was the ocean, the ocean
I felt moving inside me all winter,
the ocean into which they threw her body
because that was what she wanted,
they thought.

THE BODIES

This morning I waited for the flyblown cat to come home to die.
The neighbor boys have been on their porches too.

I have been thinking of all the things about your body I miss:
for one, your spine—what a lovely form of desire,
like a rail track.

It is the strangest day of the year, the first one without you.
I keep getting in and out of the wooden swing.

Suddenly, it is so much like you, still moving—
longer than I want it to—even without me.

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