Matt Vekakis
Aubade: Front Street
A skein of geese land in the river
and you wake at their hungry treble.
Your hand is too tepid on my chest,
but I smile anyway. The dog’s legs
make this a boneyard. I watch you
dress in the pewter sill and remember
better mornings in Val-d’Isère when
we’d forget about the tea left cooling
in the hall. Your lips are dry on my
forehead and I stretch out in the bed
greedily. There’s so much else:
even leaving can be a kindness.
Matt Vekakis is a queer poet and recent graduate of the MFA program in poetry at the University of Florida. His work has appeared in The Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, Great River Review, Southern Humanities Review and is forthcoming in Pangyrus. He lives with his husband in an old mill on the Blackstone River and runs the Writing Lab at Rhode Island College.