Marcus Myers

Marcus Myers lives in Kansas City, where he teaches English and is a founding co-editor of Bear Review. His writing has appeared in Hunger Mountain, Mid-American Review, The National Poetry Review, Pleiades, Salt Hill, Tar River Poetry and elsewhere.

The Shift

We shut our mouths for more
than several turns. In the quiet:

A finger over wine glass,
a mist on garden leaves.

Then, What's up with the weather?
Why so stupid? she said.

A wetter June than this. The surface
temperature deviant.

The shifting flow, icecaps
disappearing and her hands

between the craftsman
chair and her thighs

in black denim. Does this
make you nervous? I said.

What, a low-pressure system?
No, my wanting you

here on the porch—fearful
and arrogant—each night.

Then the giddy sinking below
the eaves' wisteria again,

as we laughed and stood together
and stumbled and kissed

beneath the fumy grapes,
and she led the once-live thing

between us—what we've misnamed
levity—indoors again.