Gerald Yelle
Have a Heart
On one hand it’s a building-lot of blind-alleys
shifting boundaries and buses
to nowhere.
It’s a house the wind knocked the roof off
where a bomb blew out the façade.
It’s a floor plan:
tables and chairs, beds and dressers,
in the way
they look in the mirror
–under the rug and everything locked in
cabinets and hung in closets,
dust under the bed,
suds in the water. It’s a vow
without wedding rings,
an urge to shoot the moon with diamonds.
Memory Palace
It’s where I keep things I won’t throw out
crowded with dressers and nightstands
a broken guitar and violin
–a dozen drawers
with letters and old photographs, nuts
and bolts and books and wire.
Allen wrenches, plugs and washers
four corners and floor space
–all kinds of surfaces
each with its own etcetera
and if there’s something I can’t remember
there’s something I’d like to forget.
Sometimes I can’t find my glasses
and I find myself standing
in the palace thinking
of all the people I used to know.
And oh yeah: I should get ready for spring
because last year I didn’t, and before I could open
the cereal box it was over
and I was looking for the moon.
Gerald Yelle has published poetry and flash fiction in numerous online and print journals. His books include The Holyoke Diaries, Mark My Word and the New World Order, and Dreaming Alone and with Others. His chapbooks include No Place I Would Rather Be, and A Box of Rooms. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts and is a member of the Florence Poets Society.
