Here Comes My Baby, Here She Comes Now

originally published April 16, 2008

What do we want?

A bright blue completeness, a pen that works,

a cinema we can settle ourselves into.

I think you said you fell asleep on the beach

and didn’t know where you were

when you woke up. For a moment,

the moment was fresh as a faceful of soap,

and then the present unspooled itself

into its various reliabilities, as it will, as it does.

I want to be the letter you wait for

in your taffeta nightgown, by your cherry-red nightstand;

I want to be the last shark swimming in the aquarium.

Let’s telegraph ourselves together,

into the citified cities and the wild-ass patches of blackberries;

let’s celebrate that moment, that quicksilver gone-again moment,

when we don’t know where we are.

Jeff Fallis

Jeff Fallis live in Athens. His poems have appeared in The Oxford American, The Iowa Review and Ploughshares.