“Queens of the Night” by John Benevelli


Long we bore your downcast eyes
raining tears across the earth.
Your cold sun bleeding out our roots.

Once we believed you would learn
something, something
about beginnings and ends
fallings and risings
loving and returning love.

But no more.

Now we are inversed,
alone in the desert.
And when the sky opens
you retreat to pixelated lights
while we bloom and sing
to moonlight.


John F. Benevelli is a poet who grew up in Bethel, Connecticut, a small town near the Connecticut-New York border. He graduated from Boston College, where he studied philosophy, and The George Washington University Law School. John now works as a civil rights attorney at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. John also is a photographer. His photographs have appeared in several exhibitions in the Washington, D.C. area. John lives with his wife and son in their Washington, D.C. home, which they share with their lovely black lab, Shenandoah.