The Yellow Allamanda & Spring Night Ghazal
The Yellow Allamanda
blooms when
he had looked almost
dead before I took
him indoors. He held
onto summer
even if it meant
his life,
the cold like a salesman
who knocks at the door
and won’t leave.
Spring Night Ghazal
Gene Pitney sings about the rising cost of love.
My heart has inflation. I must mark it down.
Are you a cat? Sit on a keyboard.
Are you a person? Leap to a cloud.
A red cap in the parking lot. A cigarette lighter
in my pocket. A short but lovely blaze.
This store sells my soul. No one buys it.
Even me.
I like words that I can roll on my tongue.
Like escarole. Like badinage. Like undulate.
I’m a package sent to the wrong address.
My many secrets burn the box open.
I told you I’m Kenneth, not Ball of Love.
I’m a spring night emergency.
Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press), Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose (BrickHouse Books), and Gold Bracelet in a Cave: Aunt Stokesia (Ethel Press).