Bio: William Doreski’s poetry has appeared in various internet and print journals, and in several collections, most recently Waiting for the Angel (2009).

Poetry by William Doreski

A Conspiracy of Colors

Watching Kim sell you T-shirts
from a huge display, I'm struck
by the dozens of colors
that flatter or deflate you.

Beige, pumpkin, charcoal, berry,
ecru, tangerine, avocado.
I can name them as casually
as you try them on. But why abet

conspiracy against nature?
Why embrace colors the cave painters
of France would never endorse?
You shouldn't encourage such abuse

by draping your torso in tones
alien to the primal senses.
I realize that's half the fun-
bracing in the mirror your brave

complexion against the demands
of colors so chemically enhanced
naming them stretches the language.
Kim likes the ones with mottoes,

brand-names, silk-screen illustrations.
I prefer the plain colors screaming
into the unconscious dark
with hues we've never seen before.

You've tried on so many not
for size but overall effect.
You purchase an armful slouched
on the counter, a slur of contrast,

and seem to have endowed yourself
with a slice of garden in autumn
when everything goes lush and fatal
in a spasm of vegetable grief.

Lunar Implications

We're no longer friends, my face
too oblique to decorate
the forecourt of your psyche.

Autumn advances leaf by leaf.
Sidewalks crackle underfoot.
The crowd at the sports bar curses

as the home team loses. A fight
rattles teeth and loses an eye.
The cops accept bribes and no one

except the mayor goes to jail.
You've remodeled your hair to impress
new friends who regard you

through eyes as blue as swimming pools.
You spend your evenings flattering
money so carefully invested

the recession doesn't apply.
That money admires the angle
at which your neck meets your body,

and believes the planet's axis
pivots between your collarbones,
creaking to accent your speech.

I wouldn't disabuse these fresh
admirers even if I could.
Frost decorates the sloping lawns.

Streetlamps challenge as I walk
through Central Square where children
smoke and swear into cell phones.

Impossible for them to notice
my ghostly step. A half moon
hulks above the old hotel.

Although I share its hunger
I reject the implications
of the faint shadow it casts 

on the side streets where lamplight
fails to penetrate. You linger
almost like one of those shadows;

but somewhere else you're as solid
as bronze, and wouldn't acknowledge
such plaintive refraction of dark.

Soups of the Day

In blue and white flower-print dress
you look as meager as a handshake.
Around us the city rumbles
as evening yawns above the river.

Dazzled by displays of silk and gold
we stalk through a department store
and exit into a lamplit square.

You're starving and eager to expend
your appetite at the coffee shop
behind the museum. Shadows bend
around corners and pool so deeply
we could drown if we aren't careful.

But the coffee shop's bright enough
to compete with Descartes or Hegel
so we sit at the counter and choose
among the many soups of the day.

Tomato cheddar, chicken and rice.
Our choices divide us. We eat
with clear conscience, yet you
in that scrawny dress seem alien

and oblique, and I want to dodge
through the kitchen and exit
into the alley where the simper
of hungry rats would sicken you.

Meanwhile you'd rise and fly away
with that evil dress blooming
about you, and your cruel pale laugh
would feel those fragile citizens

emerging from the museum
warped by Monet's tender pastels.
We finish our soups and agree
they brew good broth here. The night

has settled in to stay so we split
at the door, you catching a bus
to your suburban hideaway
where spouse and children deploy,

and me walking six blocks north
to a sublet with view of smokestacks
no longer functioning. The river
sloughs along. A thunder of bats

folds and unfolds two hundred feet
overhead, and I'll sport the scar
of your sisterly kiss until
the fresh dawn washes it off.