Christina Daub

People are Dying, But

I’m in my fifties when the officer informs me,
houses are for kissing, not parks and especially
not parks after dark, never mind that’s where
the moonlight and the stars hang out. She bores
her blinding headlights into us and barks,
are you clothed, why are your seats reclined,
what are you doing—we terrible criminals trying
to steal a little romance under Orion and Mars.
She demands to know where we live and why
we don’t go home, because houses are for kissing,
she repeats, as if I’d never thought I might kiss
you over the sink, or while paused in the doorway
handing you a book. Never mind the loveseat,
the corners, or the infamous nooks. As if I’d never
imagined the whole house being one big kisseria,
because that’s how it is when you’re in love
and want to kiss everywhere. But it’s a rough
night for the thin-lipped park policewoman
who looks like she hasn’t kissed in years, she
with the deadest beat, the shortest arm of the law
stretching only from her high beams to random
parked cars, as she makes her rounds in Rock Creek
Park, driving from playground to playground after dark.

Christina Daub is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated poet whose work can be found in several literary journals & anthologies, including Another Chicago Magazine, The Cortland Review, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Shō Poetry Journal, PoetryXHunger as well as the anthology, 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, edited by Billy Collins. She co-founded The Plum Review, its reading series and annual retreats, and has taught poetry and creative writing at George Washington University and various other schools in the DC area. She translates poetry from German and Spanish and her own poems have been translated into Russian, German and Italian. “People are Dying, But” first appeared in One Art. More at christinadaub.com.