A Night in Your City
by James Moran
After the concert, we leave the club
and run to the parking deck, past
insurance banks and law firm buildings,
large and ornate as Gothic cathedrals.
When we stop halfway, we laugh and gasp
until clouds burst and vanish around our
flushed faces, our parted lips on the brink
of chapped. Your tongue flicks out,
but only to snag the snakebite piercing
back in place. The vault of my jaw snaps shut.
As I try to forget how my eyes caught
that flesh-colored eel darting between your teeth,
I turn to the city wrapped in its gray veil,
its buildings too tall to fathom—too rigid, too steel,
cold as their countless windows, closed and unlit.
James Moran is a current MFA candidate in poetry at North Carolina State University. His writing has appeared in Semaphore Magazine, and his poetry has been nominated for the 2016 AWP Intro Journals Project. He lives in Sanford, NC.
Barking Sycamores 