AUDIO: These Pictures Are Lying Again
These Pictures are Lying Again
there are pictures from today a year ago
that will soon be from two three ten years ago
with your smile still hungrily for me
your long, sinewy arms still wanting me within
your eyes gone soft and renewed with our found fondness
with each other’s touch and voice
and overnight laughters early morning pleasures
pictures
racing like rainwater over fertile ground and opening seeds
licking over landscapes like gardens and Edens revealed anew
like juices bursting in mouthfuls of first bitten forbidden fruits
and I know now
as I will in two three ten years to come
that there is forever a weakness down deep in my soul
for the want and fever and fresh joy of your face
for the building up “yes” from the year of these pictures
for the measure of haunting regard that pulses my remembrance
in this string of found almost postcards
undispatched from a folder on my phone
and are so much more ether and imagination than photographs
—dare I say–of old
and so, much like the year that is no longer this year,
what I hold in my hand is in addition to not being you
not even a photograph of you
not even the same exposed four-by-six inches of paper
that would have filled a space in time on this earth as did we
not hardly the erasable or torn terrible kind of thing to be stuck
in a proper album beneath a coffee table yellowing in the glue
fading behind the noisy, slipping-off sheets of shiny covers
even the existence of these digital ideas shames my memory
of what is true of your time in my desire
of what is true in the remembrances of my narrative of us:
did you ever kiss me against a large oak with bark as thick as both our fingers?
was I ever undressed and asleep in the light of an April Sunday morning?
do you still have the sticky patch above your right breast from the hospital tape?
can you still taste the sweet icing from your god daughter’s wedding cake…
did the oily stain that it left on your favorite red dress ever come out?
is your mouth still, impossibly beautiful
does it still want to say my name from one, two…
soon to be ten years ago
Jas Mardis (06/2015)
(4yat)
Jas. Mardis is a 2014 inductee to the Texas Literary Hall of Fame and Editor of KenteCloth: Southwest Voices of the African Diaspora (UNT Press)
–Please include proper copyright when sharing the poems from this blog–
this is incredibly beautiful. I have read it over multiple times.
also .. building my sites back up. thank you for your words. sometimes it’s necessary to be reminded that your voice matters.
🙂
– kaiya
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Thank you for dropping in and responding. I enjoyed meeting you at the Juice Pop-Up
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