Guest
poetry
Guest The shaving cream has run out. Not even one last squirt. The blade has lost its edge. There are no more in the box. The last oatmeal pack is gone. There’s plenty of coffee. But the pot is broken. Junk mail lies all over the study where you used to read and write. Several ads for work in off-the-map places are circled in bloodred ink. Every arc is in flight. The door is wide open. The flies are hungry and approaching. The lawn is strewn with off-white letters. The wind tries to form words with them. They roll together like bundled newspapers. Which on closer look, turn out to be pheasants. Plump and freshly killed. One gets up. It’s the child we almost had. Carrying a bottle of fine red like an expected guest. When the sun hits, it looks more like a fork and knife. He speaks in a language I can’t really understand. But I try anyway. I stand in my boxers in the yard listening to him talk, looking to the wind for translation. Days and nights are thoroughbreds running through my growing beard, my shivering skin. He says lots of things. But only this I hear: “Every day is a feast of fallen birds. Eat. Eat up.”


Your poems make me wish I had a literary drinking circle à la Dead Poet’s Society. Is that too much to ask of life?
Just gorgeous, Ray!