Opiate

 

Little light sing me your lullaby

that I may lose myself in you

 

so that I might see us as we are

your flame will mark the moment

 

we are joined and healed

in our need-like reaching

 

that we might see as one

wash the blood of theft and what’s been

 

left behind         a pendulum of seasons’

snow to draught the color of a quiet light

drawn into the earth

I slip inside                 you

 

as it’s spoken

disappear on its spent resonance

 

 

 

 

Possession

 

Lover, you play

upon the strings, the stings of secrecy

as your whore-heart

bleeds, like the sun in the open sea—

hot, slow, between fists

that would tourniquet.

You promise from the winding sheet—nothing

must happen.

 

 

 

 

Casual Harvest

 

I went to strip you

of your deep succulence

and found a thirst

 

slick and stained

with you, upon my lips

a savored kiss of wildness

 

unruliness ripened by the sun

and

  consumed

 

 

 

 

Christian Downes prizes interconnectedness, and seeks to demonstrate its value through landscape imagery, eros, and the manipulation of traditional archetypes. He earned an MFA in Poetry from Seattle Pacific University, received Allegheny College’s 2013 Poetry Prize, and a Reynolds Award from Nota Bene (2011). His work appears in the DMQ Review, Thin Air, Sigma Tau Delta’s Rectangle, Town Creek Poetry, Albatross and elsewhere.