In a Beautiful Country

Kevin Prufer

A good way to fall in love
is to turn off the headlights
and drive very fast down dark roads.

Another way to fall in love
is to say they are only mints
and swallow them with a strong drink.

Then it is autumn in the body.
Your hands are cold.
Then it is winter and we are still at war.

The gold-haired girl is singing into your ear
about how we live in a beautiful country.
Snow sifts from the clouds

into your drink. It doesn't matter about the war.
A good way to fall in love
is to close up the garage and turn the engine on,

then down you'll fall through lovely mists
as a body might fall early one morning
from a high window into love. Love,

the broken glass. Love, the scissors
and the water basin. A good way to fall
is with a rope to catch you.

A good way is with something to drink
to help you march forward.
The gold-haired girl says, Don't worry

about the armies, says, We live in a time
full of love. You're thinking about this too much.
Slow down. Nothing bad will happen.

Election Night

When the deified Nero 
ordered Seneca to “open his veins,”
the playwright
complied—though he was, by then, sick and infirm
and his blood wouldn’t flow quickly enough
from the wounds,
so his friends gave him poison
to speed his demise,
though this, too, failed,
and, seeing no other option, they ran a bath
for the groaning old man and, finally
successful,
drowned him in it—

Kevin Prufer

2019

House Hunters

I love the crown molding and the white granite countertops.

And look, dear! Stainless steel appliances! Don’t you love them?  

It’s such a perfect apartment, and, in every room, a coffered ceiling.     

And don’t you love the pink twin sinks, like porcelain scallops?

And listen to the faucets, 

like the rush of a waterfall heard through thick woods just as the birds began to sing early one morning years ago in the hills outside Florence.

Kevin Prufer

2018

Rain

Always, before rain, the windows grew thick with fog.

Mist descended over the evening rooftops

and rain made generalities of the neighborhood.

Rain made red leaves stick to car windows.

Rain made the houses vague. A car

slid through rain past rows of houses.

The moon swiveled on a wet gear above it.

The moon—a searchlight suspended from one of the airships—

lit the vague face peering through the windshield,

the car sliding down the rain-filled darkness

toward the highway. The men controlling the airships

Kevin Prufer

2017

Poems

In a Beautiful Country

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Election Night

House Hunters

Rain

Poems

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In a Beautiful Country

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