Graham Barnhart | Volume 47, Issue 1 — Spring 2017

For as long as I was gone
my Pittsburgh was a summer
city of telephone poles
tacked all over with beer bottle caps.
In the evenings, deer wandered
Forbes Avenue on their way
to or from the river.
No one was surprised when lovers
spent afternoons leaning
naked from bedroom windows
calling   Marco—        Polo—
On their sills amber
glasses of iced tea emptied
and filled with sunlight.

When I came home there was snow—
Beautiful in the way beautiful
means absent, hoofprints appeared
regularly at the crosswalks,
but the deer were no longer seen.
Hoping to become vessels
for which to pour into
need not also mean
pouring out, loversspent
the winter whispering
—Marco        —Polo
back and forth in the coldparks
until, lips pressed to their ears,
they heard each other
saying only —Marco
        —Marco          —Marco