Losing Faith
As if one summer day he stole the jade buttons
off his lover’s favorite dress
and fled in his banged-up tangerine-filled pickup truck,
fled to a colder land where cornstalks wavered
in the breeze at night like candleflames as far
as the eye could see,
and he’d lie awake in the hard truck bed for hours,
rubbing the bits of jade like prayer beads,
trying to ignore the chilly rustling all around him
like the silk skirt of a woman
running wild-eyed and barefoot
in an unbuttoned dress, her breasts rising
and falling, nipples hard as jade,
pursuing him through the starlight.
Lisa Rosinsky was a 2012 Morton Marr Poetry Prize finalist, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Measure, 32 Poems, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. She has also written for the children’s magazines Highlights and Highlights High Five.
Cornfield and storm photo courtesy Shutterstock.
