currency

tonight there’s a night
falling on my head. yours.
you are not here.
nor am i there.
the night feels, on
my head like copper
on my tongue. i suck
pennies, sometimes, because
copper tastes like bloodlove–
ours, the em dash
like our joined mouths
blooming like cuts, love
we are all copper blood,
at least i am. i can’t speak
for you. what i can do
is tell you today i dreamt
we were two pennies
in a take-a- penny-leave- a-penny
dish. the dish was shaped
like a king sized bed. we have
so much aesthetically in common.
i believe the night on my head
when it tells me it’s a wishing well
which is what we’re doing
when we take or leave a penny.
we’re not paying it forward.
that’s a different belief system.
what we did is look at the pennies,
sift through for those with our birth
years embossed on them and vowed
we’d make that metal into something
more than years embossed on currency.
legal tender is a definition
meaning viable. all this lowercase
is lowercase because we love
our names in lowercase. i dreamt
today for a night to fall light
enough i could hear your hand
take mine over everything else.

*

Christian Anton Gerard is the author of Holdfast (C&R Press, early 2018) and Wilmot Here, Collect For Stella (WordTech, 2014). He’s received Pushcart Prize nominations and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholarships. He loves love and woodworking. Gerard is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. For more work visit www.christianantongerard.com.

Photo illustration by Jessica Herrera

Monday, January 23rd 2017