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John Dillon

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Yellow

The clouds are leaning fences speaking Spanish
with great rounded vowels; a milk-weed wisp
tugs and shies in your grasp. You bought me

a book with the names of the flowers in it
and took the time to read them with me.
Go like this, giving the air a snap,

the muscles of your arm, leaking through
at purple spots, accomplish the task.
A little tube leads and turns

behind your ear, you see me looking at it,
and a smile cracks from the bowl of your jaw;
you rattle your hand repeatedly, like this, like this,

working the words out from the squint corner
of your mouth, head cocked; and I can see the white
beneath your tongue. I watch you position

a workman’s apron around your waist,
making sure to catch the seam of your skirt
with the hook of your thumb, so I can see where the lathe

slipped. A long-legged spider crawls
down the shaft of your shovel,
you pause, watching.

John Dillon is an aspiring poet from Harvard University. He has also studied at Queen’s University in Belfast under the tutelage of Medbh McGuckian. He is presently working on his thesis which compares the medieval text, Buile Shuibhne, with a sequence of poems from Heaney’s Station Island. After finishing his degree, he hopes to pursue a PhD.

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