Cushion
My body prepares for the fall of planets
by holding one imaginary globe
in place of another. Its brain
skims paperback Shakespeares
so that also has something to consider, the pleasure of last twilight,
again and again.
Into memories of birth the knees smile
like mitts into slow-balls, the femurs, fibulas, tibias
all sticks that must persist the burning of souls
in their pit outside King’s Canyon, the sap sizzle, the pop.
On Yucca Mountain, genes like ash clouds deposit
in case survivors—
And the right and left hands shake on it, reconciling years
and years of estrangement. Believe me, the mind’s considered
everything, never well-enough prepared as muscle for that first falling star,
first sequoia to snap loggers’ chains out of its desire
for neck and shoulder, which it would shear like a train.
For that eraser-sized fingertip that does, and delicately,
that doesn’t ask for resignations but positions
the back of this skull
into a flatter pillow, thanking something as it does for its failures
of insight: who will catch the first stone, first flowers, first waves
of brilliant new light. Preparing, simply
preparing, bears such gifts as these.
Disclosure
Hardest snowstorm we’ve ever seen—
. . . .a weighted fist
. . . . . . .on a woman’s sunken
chin. On the floor
. . . .this light bulb’s delicate
. . . . . . . all-of-me
is how
. . . it will happen: filament at our feet
. . . . . . .ear of the world
hanging on
. . . .this ring our bodies crack: what now?
. . . . . . . The ear waits.
First this is
. . . .the answer.
Damon McLaughlin's work appears in various web and print publications including Stirring, Pedestal Magazine, and The North American Review; his first collection, Exchanging Lives, debuted last spring from The Backwaters Press. Damon lives in Tucson.
