HISTORIC STARE

                    by Lisa Hiton 

Away from the ruins
we find a large town
with the same name
as the name of a man
you are forbidden to love.
Away from the ruins, more ruins.
You identify everything by its rightful name--
the sewer : cloaca
empty space that convinces you of a civilization : agora
the marketplace, baskets of flowers, coins
passing through hands,
councilman gathering.
I cannot see
what moved in the grass
but I know it has a spine
and a heart. I
try to see
what is not there.
Soon, there will be others
milling near us.
I walk behind your shadow
never becoming it
though I ghost you
my sibyl, my sage,
your arms pointing,
pulled compass needles,
to where you know
we are going.
The sun is high now.
At the historic stair
you touch, I touch
soft silk stone.
I have to close my eyes
to imagine I’m in the agora.
You are in the agora.
Ahead of me you turn
(compass I cannot see
but I sense it
has a spine and a heart)
out from the sun,
from a silhouette
into yourself
and I am immersed in water
where there is no water.
You are more ancient than love.



​

photo by Michael Stonacek

Lisa Hiton holds an M.F.A. in poetry from Boston University and an M.Ed. in Arts in Education from Harvard University. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Linebreak, The Paris-American, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and LAMBDA Literary among others. She has received the AWP WC&C Scholarship, the Esther B Kahn Scholarship from 24Pearl Street at the Fine Arts Work Center, and nominations for the Pushcart Prize. She is the author of the chapbook, Variation on Testimony (CutBank 2017). She is the senior poetry editor of the Adroit Journal and the interviews editor of Cosmonauts Avenue.