Late

Late

 

I bought white rabbit earrings–

well after, after the bike ride under

the power lines, the parrot lines

strung over the road and filled

with feathers. They were bright.

They were brighter than your face

shaded by your hat.

 

Near the apartment, where I slung

my legs forward over the railroad slats

and crawled down to the concrete wall,

I wasn’t able to follow white rabbits,

only raised my hat to salute

Papa Legba's veve where I’d markered

it. You weren’t there. Just the skate park.

 

I could never skate, but I always liked

the look of it, the rough clack of wheel

to concrete, the jubilant jumps. The tough,

rude boys, their hair waved back as they

rode. White rabbits, every single one of them.

You, in New Orleans, your lanky frame

and black hair. Me in Georgia.

 

What to do with white rabbits

surpasses me. There's an exactitude needed,

the opposite of lateness. It's not always

mad tea parties in the park and Alice

running through. I've too worn that moniker;

of that, you were always snide.

As though I was born from you, a rabbit.

 

And now our internet dalliances

are never really the dallying kind;

no, it's parrot talk in a different way.

Come, let's go back to the skate park,

when we both were there,

where we truly knew the sun

Alicia Cole



Alicia Cole is a writer and artist in Huntsville, AL.  She's the editor of Priestess & Hierophant Press, the Interviews Editor of Black Fox Literary Magazine, the Smashwords Manager of Femspec Journal, and an intern for 256 Magazine. She also writes for Funky Feminist.  Her work has recently appeared in TAB: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, Atlas & Alice, Man in the Street Magazine, and Spill Yr Guts Horror Zine and is forthcoming in Cascadia Subduction Zone, Split Lip Magazine, and Witches & Pagans.  She loves coffee, plants, tattoos, animals, and art.