h o m e........

p a s t   i s s u e s....

s u b m i s s i o n s....

l i n k s

CHRISTOPHER DeWEESE

HIDEAWAY

The weather remained aristocratic
today, and I wonder
is something a record
if it’s been happening forever?
For example, have these trees
ever not been discreet?
What covers me is dark,
is dirt, and humid
as unwashed city weeks,
some dark lung to stand inside of.
Like an uprising 
that forgot to solicit me,
cracks sculpt the windows
into puzzle pieces.
I think I see Nebraska.
I think I see the police.
More than simply municipal,
they patrol the forest,
punishment following them
like a bad partner
shaking echoes away 
from the empty room
the forest becomes
when I’m lonely, 
this room full of quiet weather
to be afraid in.

CHICKEN AMAZING

Please excuse the trees:
their missing limbs are weapons
my nightmares need.
Please excuse the freaks.
When the forest darkens,
the sky drops teeth.
When I can’t sleep,
I throw rocks on my pillow,
burn down the coffin.
When I can’t speak,
my mouth is full of crawfish
or I’m haunted,
tweaking out so punctually
you might think I’m in business,
each fingerprint a coupon.
Times like these, 
I wish to hold my skeleton.
To reach out and touch face
with the whole glad world.
It feels so strange
to live in an arrogant castle.
The men are always on vacation,
the walls are always damp,
and we women just can’t stop knitting
ectoplasm into wee blankets.

VAN CLIBURN PLAYS THE MOONLIGHT SONATA, 1966

I hear it through the walls 
and it makes me want to write 
a different kind of poem,
the right hand like humming,
like a one-handed man 
is playing and humming
a song so familiar
it might be a window.
I call off my henchmen.
I wait in the cannon. 
I let the tiger get away.
Sometimes I don’t even know
what music is, anymore,
and it’s so good, 
it’s plain to see I’m moved
because I am stabbing
the air with my fingers.
I am kissing everything
when the fast part hits
and I think “I played this song,”
I can remember 
some truly narrative moments,
how the powder came off
their powdered wigs.

OH TRICILLIAN

Oh Tricillian,
the shadows are all wrong!
And I don’t believe you’re guilty,
but your name is on the tree,
and the tree is like a gun
smoking through the third act
in that it killed your mistress
in front of everyone.
Reading the pathologist’s report in bed
the evidence speaks to me,
a quiet island where ghosts get flattened.
Exhibit A: we all have lungs.
We share the air,
and the light slowly kills us.
“All trails are incidental to begin with,”
said the inspector,
his voice running gloves
across the baseboards
as men dusted pheasants
from our small, domestic forest.
The sherry came late and trembling
and you fainted, Tricillian,
leaving the rest of us
shaking in the rotunda
with nothing proper to eat
but biscuits and cold mutton.