TO CALLISTO, WHO WAS FIRST A GIRL, THEN A BEAR, THEN LATER THE BEAR CONSTELLATION
If I peel back the wallpaper of this world, Callisto, will I find
myself in your age? Will I be
closer to you? If the crows show as chips in a pale sky, does it mean
you still decorate the distance somewhere? I know here
holds my face like some motel’s portrait hung
in the lobby of each day, and the night’s room
has curtains I pull back to see if your slow gait in stars still
crosses my latest black window. Sometimes
I imagine us as the sole cast in Arcady – the gods unwritten,
without us. It is for spite that they spell our bodies
in animals, that they turn us to wonder
where we go beneath our coarse hides, our coats growing thicker
with each passing winter. And your groves grow odious,
my rooms in the city speak
as though they don’t know me, as we walk the freshly painted halls
of each year. But if I were a bear, Callisto –
you among poplars, myself nearby the populace –
how I would tear through this world to companion.
A.E. Watkins is a graduate of the MFA program at Saint Mary’s College of California and currently attends Purdue University’s Graduate English Program. His first collection of poetry, Dear, Companion, is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press in 2012. Individual poems can be found in Barrow Street, Copper Nickel, Denver Quarterly, Handsome, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, Verse Daily and elsewhere.