Just Anybody, or Poem against the Crumbling of the Republic

Old friend,
stuck in that small town,
we tried every way we could
to kill ourselves. 
 
That night down on the river,
that night I lost you?
 
That was a stupid night.
 
I think about it all the time.
 
We’d already sunk the front wheels
of your three-on-the-tree Impala
in the cow shit & mud.
 
Around the fire
I didn’t know half the faces.
 
You gnashed a palmful of pills.
You took off your shirt.
 
I didn’t want to ride with just anybody.
 
Old friend,
where did you go? I circled the flames,
banged on every back window.
 
Later, swaying at the water’s edge,
I started tossing rocks,
winging them hard.
 
I was hoping in the dark
I’d hit you.

Copyright © 2018 Joe Wilkins. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review, Summer 2018.

Then I Packed You Up the Ridge Like a Brother on My Back

In the blue dark I followed the ridge
toward the pines.

In a bowl of sage and dry grass
soft as the throat-hairs

of something small,
I lay down.

The sun was a long time coming,
the earth bloodless at my belly.

I waited and watched the river.
I was very still. You know how it is—

the stars closing their bright mouths,
the dew a gift on your lips.    

You did not see me,
or my rifle,

blue as the dark. I saw you
step from the willows,

give your nose to the black water.
And you were beautiful. There is so much

blood in a thing—
yours welled up from the clean hole

I made in your heart and steamed
on the river stones,

and some washed down into the river,
where it swirled a moment,

and became the breath of fish.

Copyright © 2012 Joe Wilkins. “Then I Packed You Up the Ridge Like a Brother on My Back” was published in Notes from the Journey Westward (White Pine Press, 2012). Used with permission of the author.