Favorites: 12/30 (2 of them)

GRIEF
by Stephen Dobyns

Trying to remember you
is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
across sand. Somewhere
people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.

Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.
To say your name was to be surrounded
by feathers and silk; now, reaching out,
I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I'm fragments on a tailor's floor.

I was dancing when i
learned of your death; may
my feet be severed from my body.


THE LORD SITS WITH ME OUT IN BACK
by Brett Jenkins

The Lord sits with me out in back and watches me
drink Miller High Life. I think about questions I will
not ask him and he shakes his head gently and smiles
a little. We watch birds flying low like leaves
lifting out of the fields. The cat lounges idly beside us,
toothing out the gravel from her paws. The Lord
watches her small movements for awhile. He asks me
to read him the Jack Gilbert poem again, and waits
as I flip to the dog-eared page; waits for me to wait for
the stable breath it will take to actually finish it this time.