A Horse Grazes in My Shadow

             after James Wright

Startled by my breath it bolts
to the other end of the field.

The horizon’s brow rasps
against a green cloud

which seems both
desperate and sincere. 

Into a dead tree
a flame of bird

drives its burning beak.
And somewhere out here

I have come to terms
with my brother’s suicide.

I wish the god of this place
would put me in its mouth

until I dissolve, until
the field doesn’t end

and I am broken open
like a shotgun,

swabbed clean.

In Whoever's Hotel Room This Is

If it were up to me,
the bible would begin:

A man steps into a field...
I'd forgotten what was in

the background when you took 
the photo of me I wouldn't 

see until later. When I did, 
it was just a wall, and my smile 

was a mouthful of rocks.
A little after it was clicked off 

the T.V. screen's light
condensed down a drain.
 
Even when the television 
had become an aquarium 

full of black water
that last bright dot 

burned in my eye.
On the back of my photo

you wrote, This isn't you,
and you were right,

it no longer was.

Chekhov's Gun

Nothing ever absolutely has to happen. The gun 
doesn't have to be fired. When our hero sits 

on the edge of his bed contemplating the pistol 
on his nightstand, you have to believe he might 

not use it. Then the theatre is sunk in blackness.
The audience is a log waiting to be split open. The faint 

scuff of feet. Objects are picked up, shuffled away. 
Other things are put down. Based on the hushed sounds 

you guess: a bed, some walls, a dresser. You feel 
everything shift. You sense yourself being picked up, 

set down. A cone of light cracks overhead. The audience's 
eyes flicker toward you like droplets of water.

Elegy in X Parts [My foreshadow stretches]

X.

My foreshadow stretches
out in front of me.

We stand on the soles
of each other's feet.

I am a field
and there's a man

standing in the middle
of me saying,

God is the sky pinning
me to my body.

I am a man
and there is a field 

under me saying, 
A dead man makes

love to the earth
by just lying there.