Poem 89 ± September 1, 2015

Jeff Walt
When I Think of You Now My Heart

waiting for the storm, darkness in our direction
as we sat at the kitchen table those breezy nights
when I think of you now the wind

smashing photos against the wall, pushing plants off stands,
rickety wood beating against the worn
aching hinge when each quick wind barged in,

when I think of you now my heart, my liver, my blood,
our old house those breezy nights
my heart slamming like the screen door

when I think of you now
as we sat at the kitchen table waiting
for the storm, darkness our direction.

Jeff WaltJeff Walt is the author of Soot (Seven Kitchens, 2010), co-winner of the Keystone Chapbook Prize. His poem “In the Bathroom Mirror This Morning” won the 2015 Red Hen Poetry Prize and will appear in The Los Angeles Review. Jeff’s poems have appeared in journals including Assaracus, Bay Windows, Christopher Street, New York Native, Provincetown Arts, RFD, The Gay and Lesbian Review, and The Good Men Project, among many others. Recent anthologies in which his poems appear include Gay City: Vol. 3 – RePulped (Gay City Anthologies, 2010), TOUCHING: Poems of Love, Longing, and Desire (Fearless Books, 2010) and One for the Road (Split Oak Press, 2010). Past residencies include The MacDowell Colony (1995), The Djerassi Resident Artist Program (2003), Centrum’s Port Townsend Writers’ Conference (2005), and The Kalani Artist-in-Residence Program (2009). Jeff lives in San Diego.

This poem is not previously published.