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We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
Before you dashed with me through
Fish-scale pours of tropical storm
In the falling down city I felt
Too long like a king of an unsettled
And marshy land, but dried in the sad
Victorian room by the sea I was better
For a while, where pink bouquet
Wallpaper shed from damp walls
Like gluey shadows in the corners
And the gold-framed painting
Over the rolled-in mattress
Was a nervous antique rash
Of silver moonlight and drenched sand.
I dreamed slowly on my side
As the restless squall billowed
The white gauze curtains.
They danced and beat all night.
In the morning, the rain went on
And a seagull perched like a statue
On the next roof. We heard
Someone beyond the wall
Quarrel about money
And heard another
In a car who laughed and whooped
About a new house and drove off.
In the noisy diner I wonder
Why we never talk about money
Until it’s gone. Is it because something’s
Wrong with us? Something’s wrong
With us. I always knew it. I still
Love you. And look, the lights
Are turning red down the rainy avenue.
Ernest Hilbert is the editor of the Contemporary Poetry Review, and his poems have appeared in The New Republic, The American Scholar, and Fence.
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