Donna Vorreyer

NOT THE LEAST AMONG THE STRANGE THINGS

The way you cup my face as though receiving
alms, ignore my continual quiver of worry, the peculiar
perils of it, steel your bones against our inclement age.

Like tug captains, we tow the old burdens around
the world—you at the wheel, my eyes on the horizon,
blending our thoughts with the cadence of waves.

Each day, we oil the hinges of our jaws, fill
a convenient closet with days and years already passed,
each creak of our paltry joints a half-throttled shriek.

But skin still seeks skin. And when we cannot sleep,
we slip out onto the silent deck and, like the old
astronomers, look up and sing out for new stars

Donna Vorreyer resides in the Chicago area and is the author of A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013) as well as six chapbooks, most recently Encantado, a collaboration with artist Matt Kish (Red Bird Chapbooks). She is a poetry editor for Extract(s), and her second collection Every Story is a Love Story is an Apocalypse Story is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in late 2015.