Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2011 v10n1
EVE JONES

Between

Atonement is our kitchen window
the world falls through sleepless

and wild, tiny slaughters
lining the yard. How memory lies

like the moon: silkrose from a distance,
shot by dream, a child lifted into

next year and the next. You write of Spain’s white-
moth hill, the caves, and between us

an ocean same as the moon, sheer belief.
My desire rolls like a blind man in the side yard.

Tell me you carry it dustily up streets,
the little church, the saint head blooming

in a box. Our street, named for a woman and the wind,
terrible gifts of history—

I remember. Leaving,
your face was the smallest ever, the weather

in a rose. And then
the earth’s soft grind through

the keyhole, quiet between
the foot and the still-flapping wing.

One story of love is the story of the cliff
and the ship that tries

over and
over like

snow at night, the bride unfolding forever in a black
limousine.  end