Desire at Dusk

inspired by Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho’s fragments 78-80

[strange how]

neither age
nor breakage
quells desire

[all at once]

it blossoms
each petal
reaching for sun

[the need for]

skin on skin
the swift delight
of indulgence

[some outside force]

ferries bliss into
the bloodstream
an electric impulse

[to mute the sameness]

Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares,Waxwing, Poet Lore, Cherry Tree, Salamander, Harpur Palate, and other journals. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago where she serves as an associate editor for Rhino Poetry and hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.