Public Republic

Kenneth Pobo

Photo: oedipusphinx — — — — theJWDban

Remember how you cooked up a warm plate
of forever, served it with candlelight,
and on the porch we listened to locusts
warning us Stop! Stop! Stop! But we ate

heartily and when you moved in
you were already hinting about moving out.
I stopped playing Yoko Ono when
you were home. I suppose
you sitting in torn cut-offs rhapsodizing
to Mozart was supposed to heat me up?

We’ll become grocery store shoppers,
standing in separate aisles,
you with plums, me with Oreos.
We’ll pretend we don’t see each other. Love,

like planting cotton in Connecticut—
just when the plants bloom and form bolls,
a freaky autumn snow.