Hudson Ghazal

Claudia McQuistion

 

The first night you found me we drove toward the river.
Your hands smelled like cigarettes. You blamed the river.

You cradled my fingers like I was your spider.
So I built a web. Each strand was a river.

Your mouth formed an oval, a rind ripe for peeling.
Clementines shrank like pruned thumbs in the river.

We swam toward the light blinking out from the city.
As we sunk in the mud, we said This is our river.

I trailed you to train stations, to closed supermarkets.
You knew what you wanted: a stone in the river.

I measured the length of your arms: hooks that
caught me. Once there were fish in every river.

Your breath in my ear was a car going faster. I saw
blue streaks and branches. Air hung by the river.

In basements you whispered Claudia, can you
hear the rain? All of it fell, like dimes on the river.

 

 

Claudia McQuistion is from New York. She received her MFA from UNC-Greensboro, where she was a Fred Chappell fellow. Her recent work appears in Third Coast, Copper Nickel, Pebble Lake Review, and Sou’wester.

 

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