Emily Lloyd


Adultery
— after Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins

She is the secret of my old clock, the clue
of my tapping heels, my Bombay boomerang,
the voice in my suitcase, my unfinished house;
she is the riddle of my double ring.

You are the message in the hollow oak,
my whispered watchword, the password to Larkspur Lane,
the search for the glowing hand, my ghost of a chance;
you are what happened at midnight, the tricks of the trade.

I am the mark on the mirror, the spirit of Fog
Island, the clue in the diary, the crumbling wall,
the patchwork quilt, the pledge of the twin knights;
I am the wailing octopus, end of the trail—

all of us in a great city, in Echo Valley,
at the county fair, on a camel adventure, in Lakeport,
keeping house, at Candy Castle, in Eskimo Land,
at the ice carnival, on the ranch, at Lighthouse Point.


Lamb Curry

This is what I want from prayer: to be left
streaming spices

runneled with sweat, force
glittering in my bowels

the need to chew fennel
after, the need to drink water

as no one’s face appears
in the inscrutable nan

Diet Coke with Lime: "Guess What it Tastes Like"
I guess it tastes like petals on a wet, black bough
I guess it tastes like the farmer's daughter
just after she's milked the cow
I guess it tastes like whatever she'll allow

I guess it tastes like the uncut hair of graves
I guess it tastes like getting your test back
and learning you don't have AIDS
I guess it tastes like the mome raths as they outgrabe

I guess it tastes like blackberry, blackberry, blackberry
I guess it tastes like riding back and forth
all night on the ferry
I guess it tastes like Diet Coke with Cherry

I guess it tastes like world enough and time
I guess it tastes like the night
of cloudless climes
I guess it tastes like nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless

-all poems previously published in Three Candles


Jane Eyre, Unbanned
—upon hearing of a bill to ban books with gay characters
in Alabama libraries

You think of Mr. Rochester, mad wives
in attics, Jane herself, as plain as flan.
You don’t remember Helen Burns, Jane’s friend
from school. Reader, I married her. I pressed
my eighth-grade self between those pages like
a flower, left for later hands. Helen.
"I like to have you near me," she would cough,
romantically consumptive, after Jane
snuck to her sick-bed. "Are you warm, darling?"
We’ll always find ourselves inside the book,
no matter what the book, no matter how
little we’re given. I was twelve; gay meant
nothing to me. I only knew I’d go
to Lowood Institution, rise at dawn,
bare knuckles to the switch, choke down the gruel,
pray to the bell, if this meant I could hold
another girl all night, if I could clasp—
this even if she died there while I slept,
this even if I died there in my sleep.

-previously published in Camp Rehoboth


Names That Could Possibly Pass As Cries Of Passion If
Accidentally Yelled during Sex With Anyone Not So Named

Aaliyah

Maura

Ewan

Osgood

Deepak

Uma

Ja Rule

Moe

-previously published in McSweeney’s List


Things I Haven’t Felt

Different, after losing my virginity.
Better, after the medicine I took.
Mosquitoes on my skin, before they’ve bitten me.
Profoundly changed, after I read that book.
The call of the wild. The glow of pregnancy.
Guilty, after sleeping with someone’s wife.
High as a kite, high even as a tree.
The peace that passeth understanding. Safe.
God’s presence in the world, and that of the boy
who thought I was his mother at the mall.
How long had he walked beside me without my noticing?
How long had I inadvertently hidden my face?

-previously published in The Paumanok Review