Hobble Creek Review
Hobble Creek Review
Carolee D. Sherwood
Painting walls around a new lover


While I am at work, you let yourself into my house
and paint the empty downstairs bedroom
a shade between smoldering red and shy cherry.
I fear right away you will break my heart. It is Monday,
the week still stiff beneath my palms,
this flash of heat shocking for such a new love.
I sit with my feet tucked under me until morning.
The room blushes around me all night just like you
the first time my lips skimmed your nipples.

On Tuesday, I come home to walls you’ve bathed in
something between mellow yellow and moonlight,
the color I imagine you’d be if I cracked you open,
if I held up your pieces and showed you their brightness.
I fall back onto the floor, stare up at the ceiling,
stretch out in the glow of what you’ve given me.

Wednesday you dig up a richness between espresso
and cupcake, and the taste of you remains on my tongue.
Thursday presses itself between rosemary sprig
and eucalyptus leaf. Your scent lingers on my fingertips.
Friday is either blue marguerite or sapphireberry,
the fullness of you like the sky, the clarity of you
like clean air. Then somehow, Saturday lies
in shadow, which is a shade of purple. And on Sunday,
you don’t come at all.

I paint over everything, return the space to the beige
it was before I heard your name. I think I must have
dreamed you. I curl up in the corner. I wrap my arms
around myself six times, once for each night we made love.

Morning is Monday again, and I wake alone, but I see you
have drawn a heart with leftover Wednesday
paint on the glass of the east-facing window.
As the early sun leans in on my chest, your outline
slides across the floor and ends up at my feet,
kisses my shins, rests in my lap. I am relieved
to find you here still. Now stay with me.
Please, stay.







The Marginal Way: A love story

for Ogunquit

i.
tide

I don’t know where you go when you pull away.
Shores are like women, I imagine. You visit one
when you can’t get to the other. I don’t mind
—what could I do if I did? —but hate how

you thrash when you come home angry. Always
having to leave someone. You explain (again)
how this frothy greeting is not fury, say it is
exuberance at seeing me waiting for you still.

I trust this madness, believe in the perfection
of delight and sorrow as a matched pair. I try
to forget while you’re here that you won’t be
staying, but even as you rub against me,

you begin your retreat. It happens without us
knowing at first. Imperceptible increments.
Nothing is clear except the inevitability of it.
Our measured time together passes quickly.

I am alone too soon. Your turn surprises me
every time. Unconvinced I’ve had you at all,
I search my body for signs, trinkets you left
in the sand, salt on my lips, maybe, a wet line

on my edge, a spot lavished with sea weed
and pink sea roses. Strangers visit all day, take
pictures of each other standing between us.
I don’t mind—what could I do if I did?


ii.
stowaway

I’d like to tell you I always remain calm
about where you go. I really want to be
the forgiving shore, but since I’m not,
I may as well give you the truth: I wonder
about the other women so much I trail you
when you leave. I’d like to tell you I make it
a wonderful adventure, pursue you
from the shelter of a great whale’s belly,

but since I don’t, I may as well
give you the truth: Jonah’s consumption
was his big chance to be saved; there are no gods
with my obsession. I have stowed away
in the most unassuming vessel, this dull body,
its pale blue hull, my name —
human — painted on the bow.
I’d like to tell you I am seaworthy,

but since I’m not, I may as well
give you the truth: I don’t know how
to swim. I don’t know how I’ve made it
this far. There is no land in sight.
From which horizon did I launch this
heart, anyway? I have lost track
of you out here. I’d like to tell you
I’ll survive the confusion,

but since I’m not sure, I may as well
give you the truth: I can’t bring myself to see
the others after all. I want to go back.



iii.
hook, line, sinker (the elements of poetry as swallowed by a
hungry lover)

The next thing I remember:

lying on the sand, coughing water
out of my lungs, saved from drowning,
rescued from everything by a voice
from the sea: “You’ve got it all wrong.
You are not the East Coast,
the West Coast, the Ivory Coast
or any coast at all. Love, you are
the moon, what entices me.
I look toward your light, lean into
your body. I seek you without rest.
Clear nights get me through,
the shimmering image of you touching
my skin.” The next thing I remember:

floating in the sky, embracing
someone else’s truth about me,
glowing in this perfect metaphor:
there is only one moon.
Carolee D. Sherwood is a mixed media artist and poet, and her work
has been published or is forthcoming in Awakenings Review, Wicked
Alice, Qarrtsiluni, Literary Mama, Juicebox: a Journal of the Ordinary,
Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Ballard Street
Poetry Journal, which nominated her poem, "How to Let Wild Birds
Out" for a Pushcart Prize. She is co-editor of Ouroboros Review.