I saw you under your streetlamp
for the first time in weeks,
a shadow dancing in madness,
whistling with the trees
we cut down in 1944.
Our former selves lingered, and
the past antiqued itself overnight:
memories erase their pencil lines,
the yellowing glow turns to ashes
in the blazing winter dawn.
By Heidi Turner
Once, we were children together;
we dove into the sea from the side
of the ship and swam down to the city
where the coral skyscrapers
reached toward an impossible sky
and we lived blind for one too many
minutes, friend, we found Atlantis,
and I left behind my secrets in the bay:
I’ve been chasing blue my whole life.
By Heidi Turner
It started, seed-shaped, encased in a metallic
shine left over from the stars above me
when I found the beginning and pulled
the red thread out, when I watched the flight
plan turn to smoke in the turbines
and it became itself so far from me
even as I gently unraveled the cables
I’d left alone so long: this is my thumb
extended, measuring my mushroom cloud.
By Heidi Turner
We’ve never had coffee together
and you’ve sat alone for dozens
of days, drinking your macchiato,
pretending someone is on the way,
but today, your stomach boiled
and did not take the coffee well
all because I’d told you, for once,
I would join you across the table
and play a game of invisible chess.
By Heidi Turner
I had a muse once who loved
the work I never finished
and who watched drafts burn
in the fireplace with a smile;
she was five years’ old
and knew better than I,
that better drafts
might come if I erased smudges,
a life in seventeen more years.
By Heidi Turner
Earl Grey makes fog of the past;
I no longer remember the smell
of your hair or shaving cream,
the wood-smoke perfume on your skin
or the lotion you rubbed on your arms,
and the rising steam crystallizes the sky
as it was when I did not look back
or did not cry – believe either story, or none –
the look in my eyes you did not see,
or are still haunted by on sober nights.
I will not return to you: I do not now,
even while your presence fills the air
and the ghosts of us eat breakfast together.
By Heidi Turner
You’re the lit cigarette on the railway
thrown from a train car in the Wild West
that will not spread fire over the map
to a theme song no one gets out of their head;
there is no chart for where we are
and the rivers are crossed but once,
and this one time I might just pick up the trail
and follow it to the edge, where the rails
meet the ocean. Either that, or I’ll leave
a brand-new poem beside yours
and see if it bothers to catch flame.
By Heidi Turner
I took a step back last night
just when my toes curled around
the edge of the cliff
overlooking the sea
that haunts my dreams on weekends
I don’t spend at your house.
You never knew this,
but you were not the reason
I stayed alive; you were the eyes
behind my head when I used to
take that one last step.
By Heidi Turner
A man without gloves on once asked,
“why don’t you fight no more?”
before he swung for my jaw
and I ran down the street,
past the kids tagging walls
and into an alley I’d abandoned
when it still smelled like us,
and when you smelled like vodka.
Last night, I doubled back
and scrawled on the bricks:
“Ain’t nothin’ to fight
that’s bigger than me.”
By Heidi Turner
I’m a leaking Chevy leaving antifreeze
on the road ten miles from home,
the last train pulling into Victoria Station
when the London Fog rolls down;
the fog itself sometimes, swirling and filled
with smoke; I am a broken string backstage,
red footprints in the snow.
By Heidi Turner
In the end, I want to be leaning forward
toward the light, whatever light is coming,
watch it zoom past me and take me up
in its arms – I want to slap away the hands
trying to keep me still even while holding
them in mine: Love, the light is really there,
shining in the back of our best moments,
the glow that lights newborns, the sunrise,
first coffees, the stars, the dark,
I’ll lean forward farther, fall against
my legs in supplication: when it finds me,
I want to want the light.
By Heidi Turner
Happy birthday, Jesus.
I’m sorry about the genocides
and the racism I didn’t notice
and the sexism I got hung up on
and how I didn’t notice crosses
are a little phallic until just now…
I forgot my party hat and didn’t
forget that I hate the [censored] Party
and I didn’t pray as much as I should have
and didn’t give you cake and didn’t take
Communion, but if you don’t mind,
I finally sat down in the wrapping paper
carnage (a full day late) to say:
Happy Birthday Anyway.
By Heidi Turner
I don’t understand how the moon
stays in the sky through half the day,
watching the city, blocked by smog,
boxed into the firmament
in ever-stronger clouds of smoke.
This thought came to me
yesterday, when you asked
over coffee how I could be so sad,
since I was also happy; I smiled
and added half-and-half, silent.
By Heidi Turner
There was so much of you I never meant to let in,
and suddenly it was 4AM, and you knew my secrets
even though there was so much I never said,
like I was a novel you found in a dumpster
and read from cover to cover before anyone told you
the pages had blurred to illegibility – the mystery
was solved ahead of time, and you said
my book was good before you knew I had a story.
So Merry Christmas, wherever you are.
I’m still writing.
By Heidi Turner
Thirty-five pages in, I think I’ve found the villain.
It’s his play I’m watching unfold, so why
is the story out of control? “Censor yourself!”
The glamorous amorous King of the world
forgot that he is King for a day,
the player with the long goodbye,
but goodbye while on-stage.
I wonder what kind of kingdom
the sons of the murdered brave will have.
The future looks as foretold as the past;
the world spins on its axis and fortunes reverse.
The present did not creep up:
it came bearing trumpets.
By Heidi Turner
A modest universe
inhabits the space between your eyes and mine.
In other words:
we are kissing, and I am minutely aware of your hand
now lightly touching
the small of my back, only now remembering
you don’t like
the flavor of mint, especially after coffee.
We’ll break up
soon – the world’s quietest supernova.
By Heidi Turner
It writhes and shrieks between my ears,
a mountain range I traverse alone,
fingers finding icy peaks
and the loneliest crags within my soul –
the map I draw across my image is
an endless topographical anomaly,
“Where is God,” screamed from my place
in the palm of His hand.
By Heidi Turner
It’s a drop of water rolling
between your shoulder blades,
a river through your bra strap.
It’s a delicate crust
lining your eyelids, holding
tears in place; it isn’t smiling.
It follows broken promises
unfettered – it is infectious, viral,
delicious venom, maybe medicine.
Look! You caught a glimpse!
Breathe, but slowly, slowly…
There it was again.
By Heidi Turner
It’s a suitcase in the corner
with a breaking zipper;
an antique carpetbag you’ll
leave behind in a train station
when you spot the Big Idea, misty
in the morning, nipping at your nose.
It was free, you’ll remember,
forgetting what was inside
before the train reaches London,
but after you miss the feeling
of a worn-out handle in your palm.
By Heidi Turner
Blank
Blank
Oceans? Maybe.
Blank.
Blank.
Woods / trees / leaves
Walt Whitman.
Blank.
Quarter to midnight?
I suppose that will do.
By Heidi Turner
