RAPTURE
after Yeats
A sudden rush: the blade buried halfway
Into an onion, the chopping block left
In medias res, garlic cloves cleft,
Un-minced beside glasses of cabernet.
Stove flames lap blue the bottom of a pot,
And the water rolls in a steady boil
Like the earth’s molten core, or soil
Wasted in a field of squash gone to rot.
Will any sight be stranger than a kitchen
Emptied of its humans? No naked eyes
To water, or hands to hold the knives,
None to feel the flames. Bereft of heaven,
We stumbled out of the bedroom, dizzy
And undone, rapt and abandoned: hungry.
Gregory Emilio’s poetry and essays have appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Permafrost, Pleiades, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Poet’s Billow, and World Literature Today. Recently, he was selected for the 2018 Best New Poets anthology, and won F(r)iction’s 2018 summer poetry contest. He’s the Nonfiction Editor at New South.
