Poems

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Siesta

Oh people not mine
what is it we can hear
the old custodian
coddles the tin box
in the empty church
the ex-monk clips
his lime tree just so
my soiled skin flensed
from my uniform
Jesus said to them
oh ye of little faith
Ayamonte is golden
the sun rakes over us
meticulous and slow
a mutt with cataracts
licks its parts ticking
Portugal lies exposed
on her soft cheap cot
passive and docile unlike
that bull that is Spain
the sea’s lips scold me
in that Spanish way
gentle and yet firm
nothing here is mine

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San Sebastian

Still singing in my cell
of succulents, staked by a man
who fled. Nothing personal.
How often I get that wrong…
I move on—

some man
is always fleeing, and that
is never personal. The longer
I go the fewer notes I need.
My torso a sort of hotel.
Martyrdom bores me.
My hook-ups a new flamenco—

will I be saved?
The peninsula tilts its goblets.
I am alone.
Wasn’t I always?
Swifts fleck the dry grass.
By my absence you’ll know me.

Spencer Reece

2016

Then

I was a full-time house sitter. I had no title.
I lived in a farmhouse, on a small hill,
surrounded by 100 acres. All was still.
The fields were in a government program
that paid farmers to abandon them.

Spencer Reece

2004

Ponies

I remember the ponies in the distance.
I remember you talked of a war, no two wars, a failed marriage--
discretely, without force or grandeur.
This was before they amputated your leg, before the stroke.
You rolled your r’s, spoke of Oxford,
recalled driving in the Quaker ambulance unit in China,
where you saw an oil drum filled with severed limbs.
Pleased to have your approval, I rarely spoke.
You were like a father to me and I was grateful.
I remember the ponies behind the fence, muscular,
breathing, how they worried the grass.
The ponies said: This day astounds us.

Spencer Reece

2004

Poems

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Siesta

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