Donna Vorreyer

I FORECAST YOUR ELEGY

with a first line from Herman Melville

Others praise the soft eye

of the antelope, but the miracle

of your body is more worthy.

I follow the line of your hip, linger

where it tapers into thigh, the flesh

knit over fiber and filament beneath.

I hear the crush and crash

of your lungs, subtle elasticity.

Outside, traffic flows then shrieks

to braking, an inevitable crash.

Inside, your dark bones lie under

the skin just waiting to break.

And when you are taken from

me, the blow from the recoil

will pluck all the eyes

from all the antelopes

until there is no softness

left in the world.

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Donna Vorreyer is the author of Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (Sundress Publications, 2016) and A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013) as well as eight chapbooks, including The Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2017). She serves as the reviews editor for Stirring: A Literary Collection and teaches middle school in the suburbs of Chicago.