CYNTHIA ARRIEU-KING
White Suitcase
I wonder where our love hides in my three cities.
Not even I grant your wishes in three cities.
We are silent at the stoplights like birds gliding.
I long to savor your kisses in three cities.
I have no place to rest my head and burn about you.
My tears flash white across my wrist in three cities.
Alone, I dirty fork and plate like wintertime.
A bone holds my mind in its fist in three cities.
Skull-kept, three modes of mind wander like radio.
That jade blue of your eyes: a risk in three cities.
I sleep, my thoughts about your leg touching my leg.
Folded, packed again, and so missed in three cities.
The road is green and wrong for lack of home tonight.
So quietly, I clean a dish in three cities.
Cynthia Arrieu-King is a doctoral student at the
University of Cincinnati and an echocardiographer. Her
chapbook
The Small Anything City won the Dream Horse
Press National Chapbook Contest in 2006. Her work has
appeared in
Prairie Schooner, Hotel Amerika and
Diagram and is forthcoming in
Copper Nickel.