Her ancient verse forms, eyes, and Latin hair,
small doubled moles on her left shoulder, down
towards the tan line of her Irish breast:
these marks, coupled with longing, make me swear
by virtue or by vanity. My frown
mixed with light song, and weeping, tells the rest:
we’re mixtures. I’m most Irish, sometime French,
a third Hungarian. My native songs
are rounds, ballads, or villanelles. I read
before my last love, of a village wench
who gave her all for passion. This belongs
to my youth’s frigid past. Her blood is fed
by Dante, Sophocles, Gregorian
spiced chants of monks and lechers. If I say
her skin glows white, do shadows trace the strands
of her Italian hair? Hungarian
sprung couplets lace my throat. All my forms sway
beneath her breasts: I tremble in her hands.
W. F. Lantry worked with Derek in Boston, Don in Houston, Jacqueline in Nice, and Carolyn in San Diego. He is the recipient of the Paris/Atlantic Young Writers Award. His poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, Tennessee Quarterly, Eclectica and CrossConnect. Now he works on his own in Washington, DC.
