3 Poems by Olivia Lewis

Ramekin 

In the kitchen, the ramequin
Sits and in its white angelic
Placidity, holds forth and
Sings, and its insufflation
Makes the soufflé rise
Drenched in unswept notes. 

The ceramic is secretive
Unperturbed and silent.
We do not hear it meloving
To the dough as it rises,
So softly we cannot hear,
When we are dead asleep. 

It sings of the air, warm
And real, of the kitchen,
And the fireplace, of seals and surf
Owls that fly too high and clatter against the moon.
And of coral, morning,
Orange juice, and sand witches. 

But mostly it warns of
The sooterlings that creep
Down the chimney
At midnight to
Flavor the dough with the
Zesty relish of life, and
The sweet tangy wallop of
Forgotten dreams. 

The Old Cowboy 

He ate a plucked peach
By the sycamore tree, with
Its soft texture,
Like armadillo fur
And the peach fuzz fizzled
In the sweet spring breeze
That was plumper and fuller
Than the peach could ever be
Swollen torrents in the cleft
Canyon cruel as a spider’s weft
All these things in the round
World, in the bite of a fruit
By the Mississippi. 

If You and I Lived Above the Sky 

The refraction of ice skitteringly swooned
Like the knife that shattered the moon 

In time to the twang of a Grecian lyre
And the lofty orange of the tambourine 

The moon swayed, a precarious dance
Among the fragments, it dipped and caroused 

Darkness swooped down on charcoal wings
And light rose up on simple things. 

Spotlights gleamed on the dark orcas in the midnight sea
In the night, the glint of the waves cast fairy keys 

And you and me, the sharks soared by
Underneath the surface, 

And the swimmer curled by
while the world was high.


Bionote

Olivia Lewis is a writer and student of biological sciences in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is chief editor of Aleola Journal of Poetry and Art, a print publication in its third y ear.