A Poem by Nicole Yurcaba

Greeting Autumn

Ah, yesterday you arrived.

      I greeted you by conversing while wood-cutting with my Muse:

our contemplations, self-inquiries, introspections and questionings
mingling with the tractor engine’s purr,
the wood-splitter’s hydraulic sighs,
the soft “clunk” of quartered cherry being stacked.

 

L(us)T

What drew you--my eternal Muse--

to kiss my neck below the right ear

inbetween ranking newly split oak logs

and justifying our infidelities as "accidents"?

 

Was it Lady Stetson swirled with unseasoned sycamore,

tinged with the wood-splitter's spent hydraulic fumes,

balancing what you love secretly--my lackluster femininity and devout tomboyishness?

flushed, with Desire's burning

midnight moonlight's pale spell washing his skin,

  a minute-too-long touch ignites a soul;

   two bodies, willing to mistake for fate,

    awkward chance's falling, flaming meteors.

     heavenly words, memorized

      --the yes and the now-- fading to gone,

       circumventing others unsaid.

        freckled constellations dotting a hand's back
         waiting to be read, to navigate

          lust's fiery orbit.

 

 

 

Nicole Yurcaba is a backwoods feminist hailing from West Virginia. Her childhood icons were Daniel Boone, Bettie Page and Rosie the Riveter. An adjunct instructor, farm hand, and substitute teacher, her work has been published in a multitude of places including Referential Magazine, VoxPoetica, Rolling Thunder Quarterly, The Literary Burlesque, Floyd County Moonshine, and many others.