Between, by Susan Nisenbaum Becker

The Lovers on a Bench, by Marc Chagall (France, b. Belarus) 1926.

Between
                  
An angel hovers. Pale blue moon.
The bench where the couple sits.
Her hair a black fold against his throat.
Can he feel the pear of her heart
beat under his palm? He wears canary
colored pants that carve a perfect lap
for her scarlet curve.
His body, her bowl; her body,
languid space contained. Too young
to remember the first Great War,
and too enthralled, they don’t
hear the foreshocks of the next.
Instead, the two let go the moorings
of their saddest things, sweep
into the current of their blue desire.
Time steadies then unsteadies.
How many songs can the evening hold?
Do the wavelengths
of light elongate? Something moves
between the in-breath and the out.
Even the dog stretched and standing
on his hind legs notices.

Susan Nisenbaum Becker

Susan Nisenbaum Becker’s poetry has appeared in Green Mountains Review, The Moth, The MacGuffin, Crab Orchard Review, Off the Coast Three Nations Anthology, Harvard Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Calyx, and more. She is a playwright, actor, arts organizer, and artistic collaborator performing with musicians, dancers and visual artists. Susan has received numerous Local Massachusetts Cultural Council Grants, has been featured on local cable television arts programs, and has been awarded residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and more. Her first full-length book of poems, Little Architects of Time and Space, was published by WordTech Communications/Word Poetry in 2013. Her second Dance in the Blood, received an Honorable Mention from Homebound Press 2018 Poetry Contest. Her short video project, Motherblood, won a Distinguished Film Award in the Canadian Short Film Festival and was a Semi Finalist at the World of Women Film Fair Middle East in Dubai. She is currently completing her third book of poems.