Alex Dimitrov

• AFFAIRS 

•  
• As if to appear in the months and what follows
• is to do something major: a marriage, new city,
• the end of a life with someone.
• Is it lucky to live or embarrassing?
• In the meeting on budget and profit
• no one had much to say about that.
• I see you in the garden light and after;
• taking off your shirt, tipping my head back,
• while the clock is like a painting in the background.
• It never stops, it never rests.
• Under the surface of the lake all the fish
• became countless shades of blue rust.
• The oars threaded through both water and air.
• And I’m supposed to choose who I live with,
• and I’m supposed to choose how to live.
• Above the ground, through the clouds
• this delay on the earth once.
• By the midnight-tinged bowties
• with my useless, impractical needs.
• If I could return anything while I’m here,
• where would I look for who wants it?
• Sleeping through oil and gold
• in a dream of the world without people.
• It’s hard to imagine but look, it was true once.
• Boys in the Pines, fires in the Grove
• where I walked everywhere barefoot.
• Fasting and gluttony. Minor and more so.
• The dirt that won’t tire of us and an afternoon
• spent but still going on somewhere.
• And there was a peach out of season.
• Like I imagine we live.

ALEX DIMITROV is the author of Together and by Ourselves (Copper Canyon Press), Begging for It (Four Way Books), and the digital chapbook American Boys. He lives in New York City.