This is the second Thursday Short Poem I’ve pulled from DeLana Dameron’s marvelous debut collection, How God Ends Us. It’s the best first volume from a new American poet I’ve read in a few years, and I recommend it to all. The title for this makes it an obvious choice for a TSP.
Thursday Morning
Light flickers and refracts off the copper-coiled ring
on your marriage finger. I consider these things –
where we place objects on our bodies to tell stories.
Seated alone in the audience, I am undone
each time your fingers compress
the contour of your saxophone into a moan.
I want you to tell me stories about where you travel
in that moment where your eyes are closed, about
the organization of your house or if there are dishes
in your kitchen sink or women’s clothing you’ll explain
away when we cross the threshold together. Later,
running my fingernails across the ring’s ridges, I recall
similar failed beginnings with other lovers
who adorn this space I want to occupy with a platinum
band, cover up what should be empty. I know this image –
my hand inside yours — is the short-lived ecstasy
of new beginnings, this pattern of false starts
like the other rings: royal-blue glass-bead set
into the flattened underbelly of sterling silver. Or
the cool turqoise square in pewter.
I love this. Thank youuuu, as usual