My Room Without You

                    -- for Shequita Cyprian

By Rudolph Lewis

Chilling wind at the shutter. A bone hard

affair at the Bottom Line. A feeling gone

to lunch on making things new, stifled by

a shrewd lover with the touch, the promise

of lips, of no in-betweens. Can't speak of

forgiveness. From door to door, hyenas

laugh at the sad times. Recollection—it hurts

to begin again, to fear rejection like a slave

driver's whip, hungry for torment. Nailed

to a cottonwood. Care slips away like love

and tenderness. Foolish things won't be still.

Can't wait for her to kiss the jagged hurt

to ride me underground, from the blind side

like a woman with her face turned two ways:

a mirrored face on well water. I contain

my strange love, the best kind of hoodoo

my blue creation—to tip toe on a mind,

a dry rose on the thread of a spider's web:

guitar-played tales at moonlit crossroads,

voted most likely to turn dogs into men.

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