Poetry 2014 Second Prize, Rochelle Potkar

Swing

The evening slips on a totem pole of silent bird song
fragments breaking from epiphany as the hour swells

the world, a ripening fruit pelting through windows,
utensils in the kitchen, householders returning
like spent machine guns from battle.

The day turns dense with the pre-cum of dark,
crank calls, doorbells, grocery deliveries, futile negotiations.

dimmer from inside conversations
The sun soiling the sky with a morphing moon
The artery becoming a vein
drying into a capillary
Like love, memory plays a game
Denied pathways and
pushed further back
with a feeling that something was taken away
an old key from discarded lock.

Thoughts running in babel tongues amok
world news, reviews,
with reality TV, canned laughter, recorded claps,
scripted retorts, stock pictures,
staged shows and glycerined eyes

to keep from wilting and afloat

on the ebb of one’s own sea bed.
Breaking yet another day into sediments
of a shrill alarm clock.