You in a hotel lobby—
no, your double,
trench-coated man
with leonine hair.
My sternum on fire,
the room still
cocktail-hour dim
with small lamps
like embers.
Selfishly, I think:
miss me. See my
shade in one of our
old haunts. She’ll see
right through you:
masquerade knight
feigning he’s set down
his lance and chest plate.
Lisa Ampleman is the author of Full Cry (NFSPS Press, 2013), winner of the Stevens Manuscript Competition, and I’ve Been Collecting This to Tell You (Kent State University Press, 2012), winner of the Wick chapbook competition. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, 32 Poems, Image, Massachusetts Review, New Ohio Review, New South, Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. She is a graduate of the PhD program at the University of Cincinnati.
