[Realpoetik] A.E. Watkins

[RealPoetik Magazine]

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.

-- 
RealPoetik
www.realpoetik.org
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