Amanda Auchter

Notes from the Red Couch

                    It's as if it knew

of the eventual parting, how when

you stripped the plant from the desk

it left a circle of dust

with our fingerprints trapped inside.

I know this now, know how eventually

there was an understandable panic,

that when we replaces me, the shift

makes the other seem invisible.

          I am tired of that first person

just as that room tired of

our endless bargains & constructs

the notes from the red couch

that found their way into our voices. 

I touched my lips to ensure

breathing was not optional,

tapped worry into my skin,

anything not to

touch you & shatter.

copyright2004Amanda Auchter

Apology for a Transference

                     for Christopher

Our voices are a light

under our skins.  We infect

each other, glow pink. 

I am what swarms, cheek full

of bees, barbs in my tongue,

your fat, swollen lip.

        Breathe

into the puncture, funnel

in the red light of your mouth. 

I spill honey as I wander

through your body, sleep

in the ether of your breath. 

                          Here, I want you

to say.  Live here.  My buzzes return nothing

drunk-dizzy, I wind out, fall into the cup

of your hand.  In this light,

my stings are irrelevant. 

In this light, we harden to wax.

copyright2004Amanda Auchter

While You Were Writing in My Chart

         Your ink falls,

little blue bombs on white paper. 

A burst pen loses itself, swirls

in its own confusion of clear plastic

and stem. 

         I know the fine points

of broken objects

how veins expand when cut,

that even plastic cannot contain

itself beyond its parameters,

that even we are unstable, stirring

in our casks of bone.

         We nod and talk

as if any moment our bodies

will combust, burn down

to the black cinders of our tongues.

copyright2004Amanda Auchter

Amanda Auchter is the editor of Pebble Lake Review and

was a finalist in the Atlanta Review 2004

International Poetry Competition.  She is the

recipient of the 2004 Howard Moss Poetry

Prize and won

third prize in the 2003 Writer's Digest Writing

Competition for creative nonfiction.  Her writing has

appeared or is forthcoming in Antietam Review,

Cimarron Review, DIAGRAM, Phoebe, Sulphur River

Literary Review, and elsewhere.  She has just been named poet-in-residence at Spillway Review. 

                       10/28/04