Love Is a Wound that Will Happen

← v16n2, Fall 2017

The motel is from another era, its horseshoe driveway a half-loop of time.

The wind beats the hills like carpets and orange pollen

tumbles down. I wish you could show me again the black-and-white

picture of your mother playing Juliet in Paris, the sleeves of her dress

flaring like trumpet flowers. It’s summer. The stars come out;

in what tense they shine, I’ve never been clear. Shutting my eyes,

pulling the rough white sheet to my chin, I listen to the sparrows

closing the trees, someone laughing, and in the leaves the rain picking up

exactly where it left off eight years ago one August morning.

love memory family place

Chloe Honum

Chloe Honum’s first book, The Tulip-Flame (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2014), was selected by Tracy K. Smith for the 2013 Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Prize, named a finalist for the 2015 PEN Center USA Literary Award in Poetry, won the 2014 Poetry Book of the Year Award from Foreword Reviews, and won the 2014 Best First Book of Poetry Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. She is also the author of a chapbook, Then Winter (Bull City Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Orion, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Her awards also include a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. She is an assistant professor of English at Baylor University. Photo by Victoria Marie Bee