HOW CHARMING...

When you departed, it probably was for the best—
It wasn’t like you’d actually passed, but it felt
That way. It ripped at me; no eternal rest
There. Lost about eighty pounds and the belt

Gained seven notches in the ten years hence.
Sold the cows, lost another dog to lead.
Then pride followed them, jumped the fence
And didn’t even catch its nut-sack on the Red-

Brand barbs it jumped over. But then things
Changed. “It’s when you’re not looking”, people say.
Not true. I was always looking, which brings
To mind, I was looking when I found you one day.

Like you, I’m not in love with you anymore.
But I found Cinderella, her slipper, her feet, the lore.

THE DISCOTECH

This is about you. I don’t know what
to say. No, I’m not confused nor confounded.
It’s not some sappy love story I’ve got
to get out of my system or some kind of rebounded
thing about exe’s in the past or age
God knows I’m getting old, hell, I am old,
and yet, here you are, a go go in a cage
a twirling and dancing—you are so shy—so bold .
You know I love women but only you
satisfy me. There is a turn coming
Your way. You can feel it and the clue
Is your breath, taken by the sky, I hear it humming…
You are caught up in the sails of a ship
And the wind is full of lungs pacing at quite the clip.

JOHN LUKE MARKS
                   THE WOODS FOR CLEARING

He stops the Caterpillar, steps on a track,
Hops to the ground, says, it is finished,
Dad. He’s dusty, dirty, grimy, and ash
From the fires overcoat him in pale white.

He looks dead-dog tired and we find a rock
Big enough for both of us to sit on.
I place a hand around his shoulder, the other
Hand cradles his head, and his spirit melts

Right there and I pull a Coke from the cooler
Twist the top and touch his face with it.
He takes a long pull, drains it, says,
I’m really thirsty, Dad, do you have another one?

WE COME PERFECTLY BEFORE THE FALL
     A sapphic

Wild you violets lavender grow, come summer’s
ending throes. Your dainty permission’s wishes:
Misty mornings kiltering, slows for lovers
cruising the hind roads.

Reach for paper birch limbs and swing the creek banks,
shout out epitaphs and in lieu of echoes,
go! Engrave your names in the sycamore’s page-
arrow-rived hearts drawn.

Swim along beneath the catalpas turning,
ever turning leaves in this rarified air.
Roam, and cherish nudity’s charm and laughter,
privy, so gorgeous.

Violets, you, and blushing in season, bluest
bunches yielded, come to his field and watch us.
Come, un-shield your petals and tiny eye lumes,
lavender cheeks flushed.

LEAVING BELFAST

The image of you going down, the depths
To which you’d sink, the way you break in-two,
The way you drift apart to settle debts
And scores with dying at the bottom—you
Must know, yeah, you must know the bitter silt
Of lying on your side, unsinkable,
Unsinkable, and if you had been built
With some humility less the fable
You’d still be able, lass, to sail with me.
How steamy we’d have been between the sheets
And swells and lovely gusts and calms so free,
To romance anarchy with starboard seats,
Instead of drowning both of us when down
You went, when you went down, when you left town.

ON THE PRAIRIE

The farmhouse screen-door swings in open wind
and slams against the clapboard wall and back
against the splintered jamb again—again.
The front door's grungy panes of glass are cracked,
and distort my view of all the empty rooms
inside. But I see me in lithographs.
I star in them a maudlin lad, cartoon's
bravado cloaked in cape and mask who laughs
at revenants, impervious to fear,
and slays those things he cannot see or save.
I've come back here to talk with him, his dear,
dear ghosts, if they will speak to me or rave—
The porch swing swings in concert with the door.
I dance with all of them across the floor.

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ON REPEATING SECOND GRADE

I've been working on my
two–letter words.
I can't tell you why
they're so hard and awkward
except to say by rote
and repetition some facts
elude me now, and note
this— I can't relax
or sleep at night because
of go and so and if.
So if you go, the flaws
of us— of me, this riff,
will be for naught, stow-
aways in winter's no.

THE HUNT

He bawls, it seems, some two long miles away.
The track he scents is quick with taken breath
and I am trekking, pacing night with day-
light far from breaking. I am chasing Death,
a coon too old to tree, with Blue. He's fast
as blazes, my best dog, and I can hear
his mouth throughout the wood hammering past
these hills and hollows headed toward my fear:
Cane Creek, so clear and deep, the current swift
enough for time to lag behind its wake.
And there are Blue and Death, two souls adrift
and fighting, thrashing… I lie here awake
remembering my dog, my life, the fight,
my inability to set things right.

AT THE 10¢ TABLE

If you’re fully formed how do you grow apart?
Is it a finger or a thigh or two fine breasts
which keeps you from becoming? How’s an early start
for starters now, baby? The renaissance fests
are beginning soon; when the weather clears—
let’s watch the jousts, medieval swords and shields.
Let’s play pretend like we were children, fears
aside— I want to chase you down in the fields
where you are yielding to me, your liege, at your leisure.
Or at your pleasure with permission, tell me queen;
tell me what to do with you, lay siege a Caesar
cipher. How do we make some sense? I’ve seen
the future in a storybook I picked up at a sale.
It never said a word about how we’d fail.

THE RUBE GOES HUNTING

I’ve long thought about my time spent in the woods;
of chasing game, the feel of leaves beneath my feet,
the mysteries behind each tree; the woulda,’ coulda’, shoulds
of hunting with the wind in my face, of stalking, the wingbeat
of a hawk on my mind, to see what he saw from the sky
to keep me alert and wise; to have me follow my ears
for sound, the slightest noise of a tortoise slumming by.
But I am hunting deer in a hollow, near a creek, the jeers
of the crows leading me upwards, to a knoll where I’ve seen
the buck I’ve wanted to kill for years, his antlers tall
and wide. He’s there again, but things are thick between
us: the limbs of oaks and brush, those vines, the smell of fall—
and still, I raise my rifle; the crosshairs mark his neck—
the only shot I have; out loud I say, “What the heck.”

THE KILLING TREE

I sat, one night, alone, deep in the woods,
my wheat light broken, having beat a coon
to death with it. Seems he had ripped the goods
from underneath my dog whilst fighting, strewn
his entrails round a locust tree afore
I got there and the hound went off to die.
…could hear him far out in the dark and swore.
I swore revenge and shot until my dry-
fired empty rifle clicked. I climbed the tree,
it full of clustered thorns. I don't know how
I lived. Me and the coon went at it free-
for-all. I heard him fall, fulfilled my vow.
—slid down the blood-soaked tree and heaving bile,
I knew that Daddy'd whip me after while.

THE PIT WHERE SOMETHING WORTHWHILE WEEPS

These shattered slivers of light reflect, refract
us, topping the pile of refuse strewn along
the makeshift pit, years in the making, exact
frames, only partially buried with the strong
stench of a recent dead or dying meal
a coyote dragged across the slouching biers:
love seat, cook-stove, a rowing machine, fly reel,
Cal King size rotting bedsheets and the Sears
reciprocating saw, its cord exposed,
pale-green-tinted copper oxidizing.
On looking closer, you will see he nosed
a jar of gravy out, fantasizing…
Someone near here says you have bought the land—
beware the garbage; it gets out of hand.

GARDENING IN DUNFERMLINE, FIFE

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CHARLES SOUTHERLAND EPO Poems Published Prior To 2023

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