Poetry by Billy Greene

There, Critic

love from you
 old lover:
take a picture
of my portraiture,
someday you’ll
see your signature

your strokes
on my figure

I may have
gotten over
 but the distance
keeps it closer

my frame
 narrow  smaller
every time you’re a
cold observer
 framing
every thought
I wonder

Years of Finery

She paints the city
& the country
with her body,
taking only
the roads
she knows.

She sees the cities
& the tears
fall down,
years of finery
held high in the
drowning heyday.

She asks the locals
& their children,
“Does it have to go so soon?”

They sigh in their pearls
& their silk:
“There’s only so much we can do.”

Black Market Roses

there’s a citric
dew that coats
& poisons the
petals of the roses
I forgot in the
backseat

your shy hand
somehow stayed
firm on my spine
& with a coy smile,
a furrowed brow

you opened the
door to the bitter-
sweet cold

wash.

I picked the
bouquet from
your agape mouth
then,

& it won’t be the
thorns that kill —
it will be your
dirt-knocked knees

half-lidded
blossom eyes
& satellite needs