cave hill graveyard, kentucky

Lizzy 柯 (Ke) Polishan

i keep a flask full and stay
empty   the path i follow

is a bloom-studded loop     the voices
among the headstones are the evidence:

how long we can keep loving
the things with nothing left to give

a bone-thin woman forms a question
mark, in wet grass      hugs a tomb

-stone, apparently floating—actually resting
on earth her body obscures     does the sky always bruise

this fast?    the stars are the evidence:
long-dead light still longs

to be seen    by the time i circle back,
the woman has become

a cone of cellophane
-wrapped daisies and a stray dog

lifting his leg over a mossy grave     the summer
constellations confuse me, like someone rearranged

the living-room furniture     a kid on a bicycle zooms
past      a woman bends to pluck some

small white thing      a drizzle unlocks
the earth’s perfume   rising around me

in whorls    the rain picks up    i run
to my honda    in the dark, hand on the handle

mud swallows my ankles    like a soil-throated
skeleton pulling me down   trying to come up

Lizzy 柯 (Ke) Polishan is the author of the poetry collection A Little Book of Blooms. Her work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from Gulf Coast, Rhino, The Notre Dame Review, Qu, Rust + Moth, Gigantic Sequins, The Shore, Dappled Things, and Prism International, among others. She is a poetry reader for Palette Poetry and Psaltery & Lyre, and the recipient of the Eleanor B. North Poetry Prize. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband.