I. Saunteress
To make a break for it
this sought-after blink-and-you’ll-miss-it
meetcute
I cue up what I’ve taken to calling
this epithalamium for runaway brides
I queue up for a dewy petal
to be placed on my tongue
eucharistically famished
electrically charged
Uncharacteristic as is the method
of its delivery I find a way
to twist a petal into an origami swan
II. Trobairitz
This singsong wandering lulls me and my passersby
into traffic where every car becomes a pillow
every truck a smooch
every red light a wish
What I’m after is to turn my voicebox
into a treasure trove where you can store
every trashy precious thing
and for every transaction to guarantee
a better night’s sleep insofar as
every blessed ruin becomes a proper tucking in
III. Flâneuse
In praise of levitation like the moviemusicals
condition us to labor under as if a starsign
I give myself to jonesing after jonquil bulbs
thereby replacing my habits end over end
topsyturvy crossaddict I am yet hold at bay
At the end of the day I want to disappear
into the day itself and to proliferate
into a crowd swallowing its sacrosanct dithering
A muted flourish but a flourish nonetheless
Jacob Schepers is the author of A Bundle of Careful Compromises (Outriders Poetry Project 2014) whose poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Verse, Heavy Feather Review, Burning House Press, Midway Journal, A-Minor, and elsewhere. He is a founding editor of ballast and teaches at the University of Notre Dame.