Today's poem is by Carolyn Hembree

Rereading The Trial
       

The court was everywhere and always open,
so everyone on the lam in rented rooms
toasted me the night I turned twenty-one.

We left men thirsty as blank canvases. Again
my friends and I ascended the night like steam.
The court was everywhere and always open.

In a garret, half-done landscapes hung, and women
crawled like dogs. I swear it spun, black as a game.
Me? I was toast the night I turned twenty-one

and came to on his floor, hardly a person:
a subject whose friends, blood, torn uniform
were the court's. Everywhere and always open

his chambers. Mouth. Blade. Game. This turns me on
its spit like a hunk of meat.         Wrong! What is time?
And who'll toast the night I turned twenty-one

now everyone's lost? Yet worms parachute from
old canopies that marshal green air he can't fathom.
The trees court me everywhere, always open
to toast the nights I turn and turn twenty-one.

Tweet
Copyright © 2024 Carolyn Hembree All rights reserved
from Birmingham Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission