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December 13, 2012 Poetry

Two Poems

Rob Kenagy

Two Poems photo

 

I'm Sure The Galaxy Is Beyond Your Wildest Dreams, So Let’s Just Keep It Right There

In a world shaped like Indiana, our biggest body
of water is the Wabash. In summer we watch bass
jump and dive for Mayflies against the distant red sun,
tend a small Indian fire. Silver-dollar moonlight, night
shift at the steel plant, bottom of the bottle – we keep
flowering and husking in the cornfield. Blooming
and ripping ourselves open. Surprising even our kin
long buried in the soil. We worship the county road
though it only arrives in South Bend, Brown County,
Outback Steakhouse.  One more four-dollar High Life,
high school basketball championship, pull-barn
with tinkered sprint cars. We know the sweet cicada heat
through the humid three-point night, our prize winning
hogs. We spend our bumper crop paying off the mortgage.

 

I Want The Echoey Spaces To Hum

A post-game bleacher in Wrigley
after a crosstown win / drained swimming
pool / soft ghosts of songs when needle meets
label over and over / lost seam of late night early 
morning that fills the post-party living room /
Long held moments in an empty space
stir the dead full of energy / Fix on the marble eyes
of a mounted chinook salmon and you’ll see
the trophey’s late fall spawning run /
you’ll know the shoal she left before taking
one in the cheek / before she could spill
her belly of eggs / before she knew we called
her King / She might crack her fixed neck
towards you and say sit still / remove the
sandy newspaper you’re dozing under / watch
your children swim / they’re drifting out to sea.

 

image: Heather Reynolds


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