From American Writing: A Magazine

OCTOBER

These edges
do not chafe.
They flake in my fist.

Even the yellow leaves
have turned to dust beneath the moon,
and like a ghost
that cannot forget,
the oak is tinged
with shadow.

What remains
but a skein of poplars,
like a scar against
the east, and smoke
unpeeling, fragrant
from burnings. I spurn
illusions.

Pools
darken the earth,
before frost
cracks and blackens.

I cover myself.

© Angela Kozol 2001

From Tears in the Fence

THIS IS WHAT THE KID SAID

I am random and barren, swift in the city,
rodent-vermin, summer visitor full of grit
and grind but searching for her to command
me, to royal me, blame me for her alarms.
I am able to do this because she bursts,
uninjured, uninjuring, with a thirst
for unblemished lines, words that bloom all year,
unlike my own that I shed like milk teeth.
I need a challenge, to scour my clarinet,
Issue myself a dozen writs of calumny,
spin her wits on my razor, my bill, the yoke
that broke the day she threw me like a fish, back
into the geyser, all for a bottle of sounds,
of restful refrains, and powder for drying wounds.

© Mark Russell 2014