Three Poems

 

Builded Him An Altar

I arrange trinkets          on a foldaway chair
      a lock                  of your hair                      the handle of a teacup
            the nub of a candle                    from the winter I ate
                       only mints and stones             and mourned our dog

I wade through this      strange assemblage
           of memories                             the distant mutterings of you
                    in half-sleep                  signals sailing across miles
                               to echo              in the crook of my elbow

 A tin horn from Paris   a lump of coal from the Christmas
          I caught you                    with another girl          No matter now
                    I twist a leather thong            around my wrist
                           The future hisses                   like a B-movie monster

but still I plan       our kisses  ready to muck through
          all manner of reptiles   I festoon these totems with beads
                  and blood   finger the circuitry        of your discarded cell
       Your breath            a censer      swings past my ears

 

Sounded Forth The Trumpet

You do not answer your phone, so I drive. The air smells of moss and flannel. When I arrive, alarmed by my devotion, you rub your neck. You let me in, and we decide to play checkers, rewind the pace, pad barefoot around the place, sugaring currants for jam, listening to the shred of ’70s guitars. You spill the salt with your Deadhead dance, toss some over your shoulder and swerve and shimmy up behind me like a pale slow curve. I spread my hands, fling seeds to catch in your dirt, but they clatter to the floor. Everything still hurts, and my hands are an empty garden. We spark like wires, the music rattling our bones to sway, our bellies fire, our mouths poppies opening to release the suns tucked inside. We weave garlands, pretend we’re not fucked. This is how we ignore the doubt, hands grasping at oaths we swore years ago now pale-gilled and gasping on the dock. Soon enough, the venom creeps in. This day that lured us toward joy now hooks our sin straight back toward guilt, the light we bask in most days, the ferns drooping in their baskets. We coast apart, turn the music down. The currants burn, the stench sweet and dead, like blood. We never learn.

The Fateful Lightning

The sky thickens with clouds big as
            trucks, big as Texas, and tonight
                        the slow sad whistle of the train
                                    in the distance will be no more than
                        a murmur in a dead man’s throat.
            It begins like the pinging of rain
on tin, like the crackle of a telephone
too long off the hook, a gathering
of voltage tracing its way to our room
            until, struck, we tremble as it vibrates
                        our hands, our thighs, never the same
                                    place twice, too real to be ignored, no
                        taunting teenage crush, but something
            that leaves us tumbled, limb on limb,
blue pulsing through us, pulsing toward
tomorrow where we will seek another
            storm, find a kite, a string, a key, anything
                                    to fly ourselves back to this flashing.


Donna Vorreyer is the author of Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (Sundress Publications, 2016) and A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013) as well as eight chapbooks, most recently Tinder, Smolder, Bones, and Snow (dancing girl press). She serves as the reviews editor for Stirring: A Literary Collection and teaches middle school in the suburbs of Chicago.

 
poetry, 2016SLMDonna Vorreyer