Art Can't Save Me Now

There is an urgency around her neck

his finger’s watermark
left indelible from now on
changing color, solidifying
and taunting memories

          from me
          from left hooks to my jaw
          from tire marks on my mother’s bones
          from babysitter’s unrecognizable face.

I want to shake her but he has
done a fair job of that
not enough to make her leave

even though I tell her love doesn’t look like this,
doesn’t raise hands, doesn’t steal your breath by force,
doesn’t threaten icy river graves out of jealousy.

She can’t look at me
when she tells me she feels sorry
for people who have no one,
who beg her to come back
no matter what the cost.


Aleathia Drehmer 2010

Published by Poet Plant Press, "The Love Book", 2010