After You Have Vanished by Kevin Prufer

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 29, 2016   After You Have Vanished   Kevin Prufer

The little red jewel in the bottom of your wineglass is so lovely I cannot rinse it out,   so I go into the cool and grassy air to smoke.  Which is your warmly lit house   past which no soldiers march to take the country back? When you reached across the table to touch my hand   is not attainable. I cannot recapture it.   And no gunners lean on their artillery at the city’s edge, looking our direction,   having shot the sky full of bright holes.    The light bleeds from them and it always will.    Long ago, they captured our city and now they are our neighbors,   going about their business like they were one of us.   Soon, like you, they will be asleep, having washed the dishes and turned out the kitchen lights.   When I inhale, smoke occupies me.  When I exhale—   By morning the wine in the bottom of your glass will have clotted.   I’m sorry I called it a jewel. It is not the soldiers who have shot me full of holes.   It is not light that pours out. Love did this.   I was filled with wine. Now I am drained of it.            Copyright © 2016 Kevin Prufer. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I’ve become interested in the many ways, in poetry, that exterior landscapes can be made to respond to interior ones. My next book, How He Loved Them, is about that—the way a complex feeling (here, love) can occupy a version of our shared history and physical surroundings.” —Kevin Prufer   Kevin Prufer is the author of Churches (Four Way Books, 2014).  He teaches in the graduate writing programs at the University of Houston and Lesley University and lives in Houston, Texas. Poetry by Prufer   Churches (Four Way Books, 2014)    "Old Wine" by Margaret Widdemer "Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand" by Walt Whitman "Before You Came" by Faiz Ahmed Faiz Poems on the Air   Every weekday at 6 p.m. (EST) during National Poetry Month, New York’s classical music station WQXR 105.9 FM will feature a special reading of a poem from the Poem-a-Day series. Tune in or visit wqxr.org. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038