How just like the navy
to remind us by saying
that we’d be turning around
right now if it weren’t for the gaps.
Victory has always felt like a secret
clasp in front for a dream,
and the long treks out past
l’avenue grande wind along
the vineyards.
With a howl in time,
I suppose, the world may have, too,
a taste. Does the phrase "knuckles in peril"
mean anything to you? Something else, also,
about the ocean and its hard necklace
of salt and light. I do believe a body
could be filled to the horizon here.
But, oh, close your eyes: it’s just the night.
©
's poetry and paintings have appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Literary Salt, Nimrod, Sycamore Review, and other publications. He lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia.
We’ve published eight of Auten’s paintings: “Golgotha,” “William? Mr. Blake?,” “Noctis Equis,” “Untitled,” “Mountain 1,” “Mountain 2,” “Mountain 3,” and “Mountain 4.”
