I remember that night. I couldn’t grasp my thoughts quickly enough to stop things from happening. You acted as if being with me were a sideline to the real work of blues guitar licks and buddies you were focused on like someone with a work ethic that wouldn’t let you stop, be with me only, see yourself from inside, not through the eyes of other guys. Giving in to me was giving up. In the water, the brother of your friend, kisses in water, the flash of a foot on a thigh, an arm brushing an arm in weightless water so it didn’t feel like touching—in water nothing matters. Later on the warm car’s hood—no touching, only talk—I didn’t know where you were, where you’d gone, or where you’d been.
Anne Graue’s work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies both online and in print. The author of Full and Plum-Colored Velvet, (Woodley Press, 2020) and Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), she lives in the lower Hudson Valley of New York with her husband and two daughters.
Guest Editor Lori Martin is associate professor of English at Pittsburg State University. She’s had both poetry and fiction published in magazines like Prick of the Spindle, The MacGuffin, (parenthetical), Room Magazine, Grass Limb, The Knicknackery, The Maine Review and upcoming in The Tampa Review. Martin is poetry editor for The Midwest Quarterly.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 