Poetry
by Alex Lemon
Instead, I Look
I am surrounded by that in-between of winter.
Rain damp grass, resisting the million-year pull of
Barefeet is impossible.
Deer and turkey, parts and piece, wander through brush
searching for bits of corn.
........................................They
try to become one another.
This noon is everyone’s midnight.
Brambles, weeds, the neighbor’s solitary
Horse stamps rusted hammers against the soil.
It inhales barbed wire, longs for a Last Supper
.................Before
it becomes the wait.
I feel my face. Collection plate
Of pockmarks, dirt-veins wear the weight of a buried
alphabet.
This is the one I hope never to be, but even the sky
is calling
Me a liar.
When do we return?
........................And
you thought history was dark.
All of the pets race dizzying circles beneath the
tractor.
They gather in formations out back, claws digging
Graves.
Small dog atop large dog back, they ride each other
like a highway mile of spilled semis.
Bagged goldfish dangling from the cat’s mouth.
They swell, a marching toward the road, all straight
Lines and sweat, howls climb to a high C.
The sun sinks into a field of cornstalks,
......................................Evening
becomes a playground for crickets.
A Surplus of Deficiency
Anymore, I cannot afford rain.
My tongue no longer wraps itself
around your name. The crayons
are missing, some of them are bitten.
In second-grade Samantha Stevens stole
glue bottles from every desk in class,
threw each out the window like dead
birds.
I walked in as she finished, a white curve
dropping as she turned, her small face
wet with tears. Now, it is almost the same,
my pockets are light as balloons,
I am tattooed with stains, but these jeans
hide erections. If she were here, I
would ask
her to step onto the porch so I could fold
her around a cigarette. Her fingertips
forever
stained with wax, Burnt Sienna and Ocean Blue.
The cat, zigzagging in the lilacs, stops,
trembles, as I set fire to this world.
