wildscape. literary journal

A Ring For Your Nose, A Crown For Your Head
by Anton Getzlaf

The room was smudged with orange
From lamps and string-lights
And loud with bearded men’s
Overlapping, laughing rants.
The rest, my own friends’ distant friends
At best - I was a stranger then -
Sipped pints at pauses, crinkling their cans.
On the speakers, over a piano polished fake,
A boyish singer even in his heartbreak
Showed some smugness.

Unstunned, dressed in red and white,
You chuckled to me, heavying the air
With your perfume,
Some molten fruit gone sharp with sweetness,
And with a reach we kissed.
I took you in my arms with that gratitude
That flushes through the hollows of unsureness.
I kissed you and you smelled of honey, milk and figs.

As we pulled apart, I felt myself
Retire into glory. The hilltop pride
Of having been your man one night
Drew out, drew thin for years.
Now my sink is scrubbed to white,
My forearms large -
Confident and scheduled stiff
I have grown hard. 

A stranger’s smile on the bus
Slides by like piles of leaves outside
The window, half-reflection.
I no longer stretch myself
Into the spaces in their looks
And root around behind the eyes.

But sometimes, in the wincing morning
I can hear as I am squinting on the porch
Shouting and giggling at some outrageous thing
That happened while I was asleep
And without will or warning
I stretch myself to meet my neighbors.

about the author // Anton Getzlaf