Julia Caroline Knowlton

Café of Unintelligible Desire

Everything is maybe in the café

               of unintelligible desire.  We 


may become bluer than blue nudes 

             nailed to museum walls.  Our kisses


may be fat peonies.  Lately in the café

               we realize we owe each other nothing,


only two irises & twenty tiny white crescents.  

               Outside, it is quite a different story.  


Clouds begin shaking the merciless air,

               a new sun raising its fist of fire.


What you said & what I heard disappear;

               pure moving, silence slicing.


Julia Knowlton is an MFA candidate in poetry at Antioch University in Los Angeles, where she has been granted a multi-semester creative writing fellowship. She holds an Academy of American Poets College Prize, and is the author of the memoir Body Story (Ohio U. Press), which was named an outstanding title by the American Library Association. She has recently published her poetry in the online journals Spillwords and [5x5]. She is a Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, and has M.A. and PhD degrees in French Literature.