His voice: a train in the distance. Grackle–call.
Rusty screen door. Smoke-filled memory.
I dream of him wearing a coat of flames,
blue-tipped divine fire burning, a holy
roller, or perhaps as something other,
a saint Christopher set on the car’s dash,
even though the prayers sent out to him
became redacted retroactively—
along the Mississippi blue deltas
I shift his form to the gift of poems
from another country, a book unbound,
over time unglued, scattered black birds
each page, each illegible word transferred
down to that first wounded kiss in the bar.
His shaking arms. With dark taste of ash on the tongue.
David-Glen Smith resides in Cypress, Texas, with his partner of fifteen years. They welcomed a baby boy into their lives in 2010. Smith’s first book, Variations on a Theme of Desire, was published by Saint Julian Press in April 2015. His work has appeared recently in various magazines: Assaracus, Intellectual Refugee, and Polychrome Ink. For more information, visit his site. For occasional creative outbursts, visit him on twitter: @DavidGlenSmith.
Categories: Poetry
Tags: David-Glen Smith, e-zine, ezine, hyperbole, longing, melancholy, melancholy hyperbole, new, poem, Poems from Another Country, poet, poetry, poets, submit, writing
Melancholy Hyperbole 