top of page

"Lover, You Should've Come Over" • Jeff Buckley (by Adrian Dallas Frandle)


Is this grace? All the dead boys I be

-come sing back to me.


lover,

it’s not

too late.

Out through the open sill, past

open ocean, they name me lover

& bid me wade in their lilac wine-


dark wavesong. Jeff: am I still

too old to claim I’m too young, to keep

anything from going wrong?


Yet, I mouth along to the tide.

I swim. I tread, but it seems still

like slipping into some cold


canal. I tried. Tell me, Jeff: when

the Sound pools around me

in winter & the chill melody lingers


—is that how the rush of silence

filled your voice? There exist new

warm hurt now, new horizons


to drown in, but it’s the same

water still that spills down

on funeral mourners


its falsetto. Rain, on the sill

keeping tempo. Window

open to waves wailing, I


should have…

should have…

should have…



Adrian Dallas Frandle (they/he) is a queer fish who writes poems to the world about its future. They are Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Press. “Book of Extraction: Poems with Teeth” out now with Kith Books. Find work online at adriandallas.com

Comments


bottom of page