45
Wasn't that your cheek against mine last night
Gin Streetlight When somebody loves you Impossible
When you reach the broken paddock fence
the sign will say Impossible
The color God painted my eyes A cross
between storm and ewerstream Impossible
All your wrong lovers without certificates
Stamped across their foreheads Impossible
Dear Torch Received your kind invitation
Regret conflagration impossible
You must mean a phantom Your hand at her waist
Your ache at her absence Not mine Impossible
A holy place in the emperor's city
A peach in a stone Impossible
You the mask of a ram I the mask of a bull
Horn chips Mischling Torn doors Impossible
Dance without footprints Dance with no name
in a room with no lovers not touching Impossible
Your eyes One protecting your sleeping son's dreaming
One torchlit and trying to close Impossible
Dear Lion Here's a gazelle Hold her
in your teeth but no biting Yours Impossible
Copyright Credit: Suzanne Gardinier, "45" from Today: 101 Ghazals. Copyright © 2008 by Suzanne Gardinier. Reprinted by permission of The Sheep Meadow Press.
Source: Today: 101 Ghazals (The Sheep Meadow Press, 2008)