James Owens

Naive Morning

I dreamed I solved the labyrinth of her fingerprints,
of kissing the blue-veined hollows of her wrists
with their secret bones like the shafts of flutes.
Because the weight of her breasts makes the world better
and is like the drenched weight of roses after rain,
I dreamed the tightening buds’ honeyed ache.
My sleep threaded through the threads of her sleep.
I woke, the hummingbird sun whirring at her throat.

James Owens’s newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Atlanta Review, Presence, Dappled Things, Wild Court, and Honest Ulsterman. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario.