Bruce Lowry

Bruce Lowry is a native Southerner, writer, editor, and stone reader. Recent work has been published in Valley Voices, december and Juxtaprose. His new chapbook is Boyhood, Louisiana (ARTS by the People, 2019).

Iseult

The day
Iseult
Gonne
first cast
her spell
on Yeats
she must have
held the scent
of Burberry
or my kitchen
in August
fresh cut
daisies
pink, purple
and white
mixed w/
old garlic
stewing
new shrimp

or maybe
outside
in late
grass and
earthworms
come up
to be eaten
by robins
or like
Bushmill’s
in a brown
glass or
 
by grace
maybe
her smell
was nothing
more than
youth, 
which to
men like
Yeats,
men like me,
is by then
but one more
word for death.

French Cinema

Reading the Times’ review of Tavernier’s new film,
a documentary on French cinema,

I could not recall which you liked best,
the French or the Italians,

couldn’t help but think what it might
have been like in the spring of ‘82

to go to the movies with you,
some place down in the Village,

Jules et Jim, say, or Bicycle Thief,
and after to dissect them in a small café,

with espresso and cigarettes
as if we were old lovers,

to see your face clench in frown
then unroll in a joy of light
 
so that it covered the table
like a pale linen cloth

from a black and white film,
Bergmann maybe

or one of the Japanese,
a picture crowds had flocked

to see many times before,
and would gladly see again.