Poetry from The Literary Review


Adultery

Not believing,
his fingers find the wet
seam of her strangeness,
and not believing, she opens.
Outside her windowpane
the autumn explodes in lit clusters
across the lake.

Now comes the long season.
They may as well be branded,
or yoked in a frozen pit like blind oxen.
His heart is like a chipped
rock in lava.
The lake is a solid white nothing.

She sees her face in the clock.
Before her husband comes home
every night she dances
like a witch in an empty house.