If There Is a Hell
- If There Is a Hell
it resembles this street in shadow, this streetand this streetlamp, where you and I cling
so tightly our flesh bruises for weeks andour mouths ache with the work of longing
it blinks cold, disapproving, like stars glimpsedfrom hard ground as muscle grinds into grit
it feels, like your fingers, for tears on my cheek
it tastes of tea brewed by your wife, shakeslike her hand as she pours a cup for me
it kisses like my husband scenting youon my lips, hunches his shoulders as if he might care
it cries like my son at my step on the stair,as he finds he’s stayed awake, after all [End Page 15]
Katherine E. Young is the author of Day of the Border Guards (2014 University of Arkansas Miller Williams prize finalist) and two chapbooks of original poetry, and is the translator of Two Poems by Inna Kabysh (Artist’s Proof Editions). Individual poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Iowa Review, Shenandoah, and Subtropics. Young’s translations of Russian poets Xenia Emelyanova and Inna Kabysh won third prize in the 2014 and 2011 Joseph Brodsky-Stephen Spender competitions, respectively. More information can be found at http://katherine-young-poet.com/.
