FAMINE

In the middle of the night at least twenty deer
Came out upon my pillow to graze,
Gazing down at me with sad, round eyes,
Their pointed hooves quilting my pillow.

And I thrashed gently in sleeplessness,
Moving not to disturb them, wondering
At the famine this year that forces so many
To roam to poor, unfamiliar pastures.

The moon through the window throws cold light
Upon their curved backs, making a forest
Of crossed antler shadows on sheets
That until now have been flawless and starved.


DEATH IS A HOLE

Death is a hole, or a gap
in the hole. The radio talks Texan,
the plain outside is shabby.

A false desert lost in its own dream.
I think of the forsaken rabbits, hope
they come back to me. I was a sex slave

near Tecate in the Casa Grande Hotel
spread-legged on the dining room table
the man called me Mable

no rabbits were available. Insanity
not an option, was not a remedy anyway
but the song down the throat

of death did sound beautiful, like rain
over a dry place sucking for air as with
a knife in my teeth I descend the stair.

It was a border town called Gates of Hell.
You know it, too? Filled with rabbits that
forsake you when you need them the most.

They were bygone days that should not have come
on a phantom planet that death controlled
always around, damn it, like static on the radio.


ON THE TERRACE

The lonely breakfast table starts the day,
an adjustment is made to understand
why the other chair is empty. The morning
beautiful and still to be, should woo me. Yet
the appetite is not shared, lost somewhere in memory.

How lucky the horizon is blue and needs
no handwriting on its emptiness. I am
written on thoroughly, a lost novel
found again. I remember the predictable plot too late,
realize the silly, sad urgency of moss.

From Everything Preserved: Poems 1955-2005. Copyright 2006 by Landis Everson. All rights reserved.