No Man's Land

– inspired by the painting "No Man's Land" by Melissa McCutcheon


Do you remember Barbados, the colors you found in the streets,
among the poor, the day we followed those men, two struggling
with the weight of another on four bared feet, how we thought,
when they entered the alley, that they'd waylaid him at dawn,
were getting rid of the body, the way his head rolled from side to side,
we were sure he was dead, and you were the brave one,
stepping into the dark of what could have been, and there they were,
wearing all that dirt, while, less than half a mile away,
on the pure white sand, we could have pretended to have seen the world,
but you needed truth, and those two men, they shared everything,
the way they bucketed rags, bathed the other with such tenderness,
and we learned he was very much alive, but couldn't use his limbs,
how the disease had taken him in his prime,
and there were no motored wheelchairs, no way to get from here to there,
unless carried by those who knew him, how he'd been alone for years,
no family, no home to speak of, except the walls of that alley
and those men, how, even there, where getting through the day
might come at some great cost, they could love someone who wasn't them,
do you remember the colors, the way you were possessed,
as if you'd never seen before the blues, the reds
you said could only be found in the heart of no man's land.





About the Heart, Where It Hurts, and How Often

– from "To His Lost Lover" by Simon Armitage
You were the first to notice,
when you nearly fell
from the roof, sneaking out,
the way he'd wait
until they'd all gone to bed,
turn off the lights, creep
thru the back door
like a burglar
breaking into the vault of night
to pinch the moon,
and you were stuck there,
expecting him to light a cigarette
or something, not to lay
in the garden she'd tended
every year for as long as we'd lived
next door, and you told me,
come morning, how you couldn't
get down, how he'd
stayed there hours,
so we hid among the eaves
and watched him
curl, night after night,
at the base of the butterfly bush,
as if he were hoping
the earth would take him back,
as it had her, welcome him as seed,
as mournful promise of bloom,
finger-roots searching
the soil for his heart.


A graduate of Spalding University's MFA program, Lafayette was recently awarded a Ucross Foundation Fellowship. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Boxcar Poetry Review, Juked, FRIGG, 13th Warrior Review, poeticdiversity, Big Toe Review, Not Just Air, and Word Riot, among others. Two of Lafayette's poems were recently nominated for a Pushcart and for a Best of the Net Anthology award respectively.