The Problem With Sappho

Charles Rafferty

Only one complete poem remains. The rest of it is berries left in the bramble after a visit from midday starlings. For years I couldn't understand how this redaction moved anyone to tears. She was a dampness in the matchbook. But the world is patient. Eventually the diamond travels from the mantle to the finger of the woman you love. Eventually the light from an exploded star arrives to confirm the emperor's power. It's clear now that a very old bruise can tell us how hard someone was punched. The detective solves a murder by the help of a single hair. Archeologists find a molar and build a face to fit.

The Man Who Is Ready

I’m on the brink of daffodils.
The backyard snow is full of urine
blooms, the mud underneath is ready
to be itself. It won’t be long
before the planet tilts and the birds
roll north like marbles, the sap
crawls out of the bedrock. The meadow's
sublimation makes me feel
like a piece of sky — ready to plummet,
ready to rain. Up on the mountain
the snowcap wishes toward water —
a wildness that doesn't lose pace,
no matter the stones crowding its path,
no matter the roots of everything. Down here

Charles Rafferty

2018

Garden State Racetrack

When I was ten, the grandstand burned to the ground in the next town over. The black smoke galloped into the air right over our house, and ash the size of silver dollars began landing on the lawn. Later, when we heard what happened, we believed it was the smoke of horses, the smoke of our drunk fathers, the smoke of the money that would not feed us. I remember that the ash dissolved when I picked it up, that I had to scrub my hands twice to get rid of it. The following morning we would ride our bikes to make certain what had burned.

Charles Rafferty

2018

Forecast

Famous people have been dying all week, and the Christmas tree just stopped drinking. Talk about omens. It's impossible to get the venetian blinds to stay level anymore. Everywhere I look, people are running the errands they won't remember by this time tomorrow. I remember how, years ago, I had to cut the fishing line caught in the high branches beside the Mullica River, sacrificing the lure that put a kink in my neck as I hunched over my own lap to tie it. I fear my wife will decide to spend my last decade on earth with a better man. I fear I'll be a footnote to somebody else's grandeur.

Charles Rafferty

2018

Poems

The Problem With Sappho

More by this poet

The Man Who Is Ready

Garden State Racetrack

Forecast

Poems

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The Problem With Sappho

More by this poet

The Man Who Is Ready

Garden State Racetrack

Forecast

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