David B. Prather is the author of We Were Birds (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2019), and he has two forthcoming poetry collections: Bending Light with Bare Hands (Fernwood Press) and Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions). His work has appeared in many journals, including Prairie Schooner, Potomac Review, etc.

Anthimeria Lover

I verb my way into your heart,
scatter mulberry adjectives

into your strawberry chambers.
I language your mouth

with all my synonyms for kiss,
even those I make up

with my loquacious lips.
I willow your skin, pawpaw

your flesh, pine your body
with mine. I sunlight your eyes.

I moonlight through leaves
to find you.  When I ocean to you,

you coastline to my every touch.
Noun each thought, ripen them

real as berry and fruit, bittersweet
your teeth and tongue.

I honeysuckle my vines
around your wisteria limbs,

and we honeybee, hummingbird
each other.  All night,

I cloud upon your river, clad
in humid air, rise, rise.  And I

firefly with you, make stars
among the trees as gods whippoorwill

far away, even as we participle,
conjugate, and sway.

I Was There When My Mother Found Her Power

It started with infidelity, my father’s,
and my mother feeling she was never enough
all those wasted years. It sounded like glass

breaking. It sounded like a door slam,
a car spinning gravel and speeding away.
It took hold when her mother told her

she wouldn’t pick sides, think of the kids,
the family. It was a parting of the branches
and leaves that had grown up around her.

It meant climbing all these hills to get out,
get away, get free. It appeared later
as a haircut, shoulder-length up to the nape

of her neck. What Samson lost, she gained.
It tumbled out as advice to her son and daughter,
bitter from the tongue, acid to the ears.

It was a busy street. The sun was hitching a ride
to wherever we were going, all our shadows heavier.
She doesn’t remember how any of us got home.