Rosy-Fingered Whatever

Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.

Few things are as convincing as the Greek landscape
when Dörpfeld explains it in the 1900 translation
of The Odyssey. November—blood month—and dawn
sprawling over its doily of cumulae like a lover might
a bed not hers. Or it could scatter like embers
on the underside of history, assume the shape
a body made in Herculaneum, become the sand
in an arena, volleyball court, hourglass. Patience.

Amazed as windows, our eyes the wine-blue of water
with nothing under it, it’s all we can do to keep loving you,
rosy-fingered whatever, as we might an ice cube
bumper-carring on a scarred griddle iron. You’re a boo-boo,
a radiant revenant in your gardens of toule.
Once each day, you return Persephone-etched
to your number, dumber each time the date
falls like a date, soft, too soft, sugared to solvency.
Edible erasure, I could finger the corners of a sunset
if you let me. I’ve waited for you. I’m a waiter and the waited-
for hors d’oeuvres, chattering like teeth on a tin tray.

Chad Davidson is the author of From the Fire Hills (2014), The Last Predicta (2008), and Consolation Miracle (2003), all three from Southern Illinois University Press, as well as co-author with Gregory Fraser of two textbooks, including Writing Poetry: Creative and Critical Approaches (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). His poems have appeared in Doubletake, The Paris Review, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Virginia Quarterly Review, and others. He is professor of literature and creative writing at the University of West Georgia near Atlanta and co-directs Convivio, a writing conference in Umbria, Italy. (updated 10/2017)