Today's poem is by Sydney Mayes

anything that is fourteen lines
       

is about you :: the bald spot on a widowed
man's peak, sunned a sapsucker red :: you are
bruise red centered in silt grey tonsure :: an opened
mouth :: an opened chest :: an adolescent hare braced
against sidewalk :: all the bottle flies suckling
the final pink of its small intestine :: you
the collective :: you trillion eyes :: prismatic
former maggots pulling meat from rabbit's bone braid

—beloved, today i spoke to the river about you.
told her you are her milky equivalent :: a gosling
white flood receded. the river wants to meet you.
the river wants to check beneath your skin for sunfish.
the river wants to know if the cornsilk :: cornsick yellow
:: hurricane in me is stilled by the pink brash of you—

Copyright © 2024 Sydney Mayes All rights reserved
from ONLY POEMS
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission