VOXOxford Mississippi’s Independent Literary Journal

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Dwaine Rieves At Night

That sound is metal, a gate closing

at 2 AM, you upstairs in the window

watching shadows remove the garden.

It’s all down there, willing to be

noticed or dreamed, what’s being

taken or just now gone. The latch

fell quickly—the signal you assume

for shadows to move like lovers. Even

the streetlight’s collusive, shadows

lifting their choices, root balls of

foxglove and coral birch, unsuspecting

spiders hanging veils above the empty

holes. The webs are good as draped

about your arms. So dark. Beside you,

a fly’s lifeless shell, the black gonadal

eyes. From which you’ll say the night

was a sleepless delusion. Whatever

called you, only wind. This to

the garden’s placid shadows and

missing lovers, to a web’s writhing

flies, a light there glossing the wings.

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