SHE LOVES YOU
She hadn’t finished her dream,
so I finished it for her.
I wanted it to be lucid.
So that she could move there
as she couldn’t otherwise.
I wanted to give it to her
as a gift, so I worked
all night on it. I made
her able to fly.
PUSH-PULL SUMMER
In the silence, small planes
purr along the coast
dragging banners of DARLING
over Shelter Island.
Clear decisions, Clare says, squinting
at a landscape of tiny red figures.
She bows over her laptop with a stack
of index cards full of sloppy Japanese.
Where’s the heat? Jamaal asks. He knows
the answer. In the repetition, he mutters.
His cherry-haired boyfriend sleeps with his ear
against a long cafe table, remembering a kiss.
His wet glass making the second figure 8 I have seen
today. Another infinity. The first was a blue
rubber band twisted at Sunset Beach
where my sister pointed out a double rainbow
over the ocean. What’s it mean?! she asks
the Ethiopian driver standing next
to a long black car. What’s it mean?!
He shrugs. He could be
ferrying the dead. No,
he says. No secret.
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Gail Hanlon’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, New Letters, Thrush, Cincinnati Review, Verse Daily, and Best American Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. She has a recent review in Tarpaulin Sky, published a chapbook, SIFT (Finishing Line), and was a finalist for the Iowa Review Award (2013).