A SINGING COMPULSION

                    by Michael Schmeltzer 

                   for Amber 

I am sure the urgent red dress of your voice
is what caused this bruise,

this absurd blue lake
on the back of my thigh.

You are singing in the kitchen,
a knife to your mouth

like a microphone. I am swimmingly
drunk. I am spinning

like a siren. Your song. Your teeth
gleaming. When I topple

we cackle. We are happy
in our crisis.

                   ~
​
I am afraid
in the face of your silence.

I have not forgotten the excitement
in your voice, that livewire of light citrus.

Such quiet violence as found on your lips,
as found on the twilight-lace

of a Tuesday evening
when the teakettle stops its train whistle shriek.

Without a word
one of us retrieves the creamer, the other

sugar cubes from the cupboard.
It doesn’t matter

who does what. That
is the worst part.


​

photo by L. Maria S.

Michael Schmeltzer was born in Yokosuka, Japan, and eventually moved to the US. He is the author of Elegy/Elk River (Floating Bridge Press, 2015,) winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, and Blood Song (Two Sylvias Press, 2016) which was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. A debut nonfiction book, A Single Throat Opens, (a lyric exploration of addiction written collaboratively with Meghan McClure) is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press and is now available for pre-sale.