Mytheme
by and published in Edition Eight of Pomegranate
You have green batik
sheathes to swallow sunlight
before the morning burns my eyes.
You have the scent of hash and the sound of Bird’s
jazz rising in reams, growing thick like Creeping
Jenny over your attic-bedroom walls.
You have a pendant of Saint
George around
your neck.
Patron saint of…? I wondered
aloud as my hands wandered
farther and farther
down
your
back.
There is a freckle
there-waiting low, a secret-
under your waistband and all for me.
You said: Slaying
dragons…? and
I laughed.
You said you will leave
when this is over, return to
every place you have ever found water.
You said: Desire is
a funny thing. I thought:
desire is an arched window
seen through the view of
a dormer. I said: Spent
desire is a tree
in a trash bin.
This is my fear.
This is what binds me.
It keeps me quiet: not knowing
much and yet feeling
for all you have.
Dara Schwyhart
Dara Deann Schwyhart is 21 and teetering on the vertigo-inducing precipice commonly known as the “real world”. She will graduate from the University of Kansas in the spring of 2009 with degrees in Anthropology and Film, two fields that-with the help of some alchemy-may yet create poetry.