» Poetry
Two Poems
On Our Date I Forget the “Birds of Prey” Exhibit is Closed Sunday
Grace is just life
caught in the throat. Imprinted
and broken winged.
Crow hit by my Toyota, muddy.
Peace and rehab three-syllable words
when slurred. Grace of certainty
in the sun’s smallness—small enough
to set behind your hand,
yet still lift like a hand
on her waist while facing a dark nerve.
Her to touch, a crow
not very much a crow, wingless
who must hop from branch to branch
as crippled form of grace,
as chapel wind is pious, bows
in gospel like fletching
post-launch, inalterable flight.
Who dares claim the feathers
of such a fucked-up bird for
violence?
Rhetorical questions claim
power from the empty, ellipses
lit like street lamps, spacing
regular pools through dark.
Anyways you forgot
your walking boots. Leave
like the cut that gliding scissors
pass. You came into this life
like chains deliver the flightless.
Like silence delivers a stillborn grace.
Touchpoints
The wanting child breaks a bowl
before he loses his first tooth. Research says
we regress before moving forward
the way white tides marshal themselves
before they break. A circle
opens into a spiral and the trauma
opens into an echo. But I don’t wanna
echo. But despite the begging
watch the hitting segue into bars
and showers full of right heat. The way
washing becomes a sloughing
or a person becomes a lesson.