Apocalyptic Anacreontic (Pantoum)
Andrea Giedinghagen
About the Author
Andrea Giedinghagen is a lesbian poet and painter from Missouri living with disability. Her work explores themes of grief, embodiment and desire. She revels in building new worlds within formal constraints (corralling pantoums, sestinas and other tricky beasts). Her work has recently appeared in Cetera, The Bellevue Review, Calyx, and others, and is forthcoming in Blood Orange Review and The Healing Muse.
Cover by: Bryan Kyed
Apocalypic Anacreontic (Pantoum)
I will still love her when the last bourbon bottle is emptied
and smashed into glittering shards in the alley-
when only bright cigarette ends light our way
in the dim and untrammeled streets of the night:
Her eyes glitter, glass shards in the alley.
Her breath, heavy with liquor and lust, speaks
(in the dim, untrammeled streets of the night)
incantations of desire into my waiting lungs.
Her breath is lust-sweet, liquor-heavy. It speaks
at the other end of breathlessness. We lie in an unmade bed
wreathed in incantations of desire
sleek and sated like cats in the light of the setting sun.
We lie breathless in an unmade bed;
I will love her still in the ruins of this dying century.
Sated by the light of the setting sun,
I will kiss her eyes closed in the ashes.
I will hold her still in the ruins of this dying century.
In a world choking on endings,
I will kiss her eyes closed in the ashes.
I will make us whole from these fragments.
The world is choking on endings,
and the last bourbon bottle is emptied.
I will make us whole from these fragments,
while bright cigarette ends light our way.