Love is a beetle in the brain
says my horoscope today, which
makes me think
of my wife’s
childhood nickname, Beetle, a play
on her middle name, Betul, Turkish
for virgin, or pure, a name
she abandoned by the wayside after
splitting hearts with wedge and sledgehammer,
the way experience accrues around firewood
like dead leaves in the fenced in corner
of our yard. Betul, I loved you first
that first year in grad school, Maryland,
when we stayed up all night, sprawled
on the floor, the long poems of Stevens open
before us: Auroras of Autumn, Esthétique du Mal.
Back then, you still wore a head scarf,
you still ate halal and prayed five times a day.
It was Ramadan. When I leaned into you
you leaned away, showing me your neck,
though something as simple
as your hand next to mine
warped my mind in a way
that felt right despite the rejection.
That was years ago. I traded you
any book you showed interest in, only
to have them returned dogeared and marked up
in pencil, The Women Troubadours for your
Ottoman Women, and whatever else caught
your eye in that light. You knew and know
how to settle in, how to make a dwelling,
whether a book, a studio
apartment, or our rented house
now in Florida, your own. You made me
your own, and for once
I didn’t thrash at the barriers,
I didn’t protest, I didn’t feel confined
or restricted in mind. Betul,
there’s a beetle in my brain, crawling
every which way, tapping its thin legs
from the frontal lobe
to the cerebellum. It’s telling me to stay,
stay here and loyal, in this morning that,
if we’re lucky, might last a lifetime.
Max Lasky is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the literary magazine, Leavings. His poems are published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Frontier Poetry, the Academy of American Poets’ 2021 Prize in Memory of Anaïs Nin, The Indianapolis Review, OxMag, and elsewhere.
Image: the-scientist.com
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