Leeward of Us
We can no longer trace
the glittering path of sirens
that lingered for us to follow,
now somewhere obscured
in a grey skyline stretching arid and pale
between us. All this life leading up to you
had been a cacophony of sighs
and a wordless orison, leaving
a bare brightness with gold filigree
on every border that separated
your hands, your arms
your mind, from mine.
But we built houses and pylons
that blocked out the light,
our reflection turning leprous
in mirrors. We took them down
and wrapped them in newspaper,
moving endlessly through states
until the sunset leered at us,
never wavering during that last summer
that sent us blood-sucking mosquitoes.
They waited treacherously on our walls
barred by the yellow haze,
and we mistook our reflections
for ourselves. If only
we could let the light spread over us
and see it through the gills and hollows,
the metal and coil.
Jemma Leigh Roe
For Keanu Reeves, Who Once Saved Me From Drowning
My heart is marmoreal
drowned into small ripples
disappearing
into stillness so low it scares me.
Riverine, you found me
narrow but deep enough for you
sunken in the sand.
You charted a course
looking for significance
along the curves of these shores
thinking you knew my every current.
But I am as rough as this cliff
with spalled edges:
one misstep and you will fall
between never and always,
so close to the sun that glistened on your shoulders,
scathed into cinders by a white forest fire.
The waxwork melts
and naked, I am ashamed.
Beaten down by the heat,
I cannot hide the fragility of my contrivances.
Blue angel, I take to the air.
Your face appeared as moonlight
dancing on the wave that was to crash over me.
You rode on its back away from reality
as I frittered the hours trying to remember
what happened to someone else.
Jemma Leigh Roe
Jemma Leigh Roe studied art at the Université Paris-Sorbonne and received a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from Princeton University. Her visual art and poetry are strongly influenced by a near-death experience she had when young.