Immortal Romance

by Kristina Cerrone

Juniper and Holly

When the house turned inside-out,

the window boxes and the garden hose

stayed in the same place 

 

outside the kitchen window

where the juniper and holly

transcribed some of our DNA 

 

into the soil, in a generous attempt 

to spare our memories.

The only difference was that

 

going home was running away, 

and closing the door to your bedroom

was never coming back.

Moth Medicine 

 I showed up to my law office in my torn

painting overalls.  I told them whom else

to ask for advice, and whom not.  Let ‘em

 

chase me up through the sandy pathways to 

an abandoned camp headquarters where ukulele 

bodies stick out from storage containers piled 

 

high beyond reach, immersed by the stems in 

items gone unused and uneaten by past troops.

Moths wait to be released from the cupboard;

 

they are doctors who perform time bypasses.

If love is an apology for death, let death 

apologize, profusely, for love.

 

Day Of The Rest

You can’t just call a handyman 

to come twist the system to pass 

permanent rent regulations, like 

muzzling a rabid dog, and “I 

think I just may need someone 

with a wrench, very quick.”

 

The Brooklyn Bridge took 14

years to complete, and I’m not

sure if anyone bottled flower

essences of mountain laurel on

the full moon thereafter.  God

wrote a love letter to the poor,

 

which He spent years editing in

the evenings, and each time He

felt that it might be complete, 

He’d download yet a bit more info-

rmation from the psyches of well-

dressed scourges telling stories

 

about their children’s weddings

they’d keep paying for by “crushing 

skulls” and lighting fires in every

corner of Kings County.  Until one 

evening it dawned upon Him how to

end it.  He left his finger on 

 

the spacebar, and went into the 

next room to rest.  The following

day He began delivering His Answer 

to the petitioning masses, the

file being too large to send at 

one time, the quiet lasting for

 

at least 14 days;  the temp-

erature dropping like a bag of

sand from so many fires being

deleted at once; our eyesight

blurring and then becoming clear

again, from the fireworks dis-

 

play in reverse.

 

I Swear By All the Piles of Dishes I Have Mothered (for Farrah)

 

Instead of commencing my morning

routine by writing this poem, I

decided to take responsibility for

some of the dishes in the sink.  They

were scattered with metal straws and

coffee grinds, peanut butter and a

pair of scissors; I passively scanned

the slippery mess for my most trusted

culinary implement, the deputy director

of all utensils (second only to a 

santoku knife): the potato peeler. Yet 

what I found, at peace in the coda of 

a receding tide of waste, was my smoke 

detector.  

                                                If I heard 

your voice screaming from your brain

while you drove, suspended over bridges 

feeling like you’d never crossed a 

threshold worthy of written comparison,

then you should know the truth: you

 

have.  And you should know that you are 

worthy of the virtue of light-bending 

heat, the dignity of cleaning all

the places where the ants gather, and 

the calamity of being divine.