Conversation Downtown

—for E.L.

We agree. Some gestures

are not called, arrive

between words,

corner in the day's surface

painfully, so everyone

turns and has forgotten already

what took place, begins to think what

now can be done.

Was there a failure,

a loss, a desire slipped—?

We let that talk go,

you watching

our three shapes scatter

on a pool beneath

skyscrapers so monstrous

as to be invisible,

unbeautiful as

they will be loved

and beautiful

without anyone’s consent.

Property of Shadow

I want to be beautiful

as a woman is—

beautiful, the way

she arrives through her body,

making me certain of it

and of mine,

so an image of her

appears briefly in me and

I have forgotten myself.

The outside remains,

where I go mistaking one

thing for another,

my outline scattered

across grasses, flashed up

late against walls,

each time enough to

see that other, ask what

he might feel,

now she.

**

Andre Hulet’s poetry has appeared in Faultine, and his essay, “Reading Detectives: Teaching Analysis and Argument in First-Year Writing,” is forthcoming from the Modern Language Association. He is also an editor for At Length Magazine. He currently lives in Iowa City, where he works as a software developer for the Gillette Company.

Archived at http://lit.konundrum.com/poetry/hulet_poems.htm