Two Orange Pips, Planted in August
Let us camp in the jungle. I have heard
the demon-speak of a cougar, and want
to hear it again before I die. All memories
are twins, only sometimes we die before we meet
the other halves. I can't remember my sisters'
names, only that they are both pale
wisteria draped over a pond, moonlight
whitened, my uncle almost died so many times his heart
is a chicken's foot, his stomach an old bucket, he stays clean
shaven, unhandsome but clean, his brother
my father, is nearly finished. He twins everything,
double girls, double boys, a watch on each hand
and the cougar, its throat bloody and dark,
licking ink from vellum in an old tomb, I dreamed
I loved a pair of wives, one of them my own,
another I haven't ever met. Imagine a life
so real it echoes, two orange pips planted in August,
a jungle, a verdant clearing to set our camp
The Danish Master
Last night I dreamt a Danish painter died, his mouth
so purple. I woke to the year's first snowfall, silent,
every vector aching, the cold meat of my thighs,
the skinny cutlet of my shoulder. I think sometimes
of robins gathering on white arms, spackling a sycamore at the riverside.
There is a red bridge. I have walked toward traffic with my eyes shut,
a pale arm looped through mine, the birds glowing, purple,
red chests purpling at dawn. How bloody,
the red bridge splinting the river, the robins
bleeding skyward. I have seen so many awful things,
the painter, his mouth, the river
The Long Weekend is Over
after Paige Lewis's “The River Reflects Nothing”
Alone among the tidepools, I
prayed, and in answer the tide pulled
me seaward. I beached on my back,
on my knees puked 'til empty,
my golden shovel flipping in the surf, soggy fists
and knees in sand, alone – and
when you were in the hospital, it
buoyed in my heart-reef always.
Even while you slept, it seemed
I had found the poetry at the heart of you, and things to like:
a seahorse anchored to eelgrass, a
tiny twitching seahorse baby, a magic trick
of gender, these tidepools, those
books I brought you, the light, the tadpoles.
John Leo’s work has been published in Reality Beach, Tinderbox, Breakwater Review, and elsewhere. I'm an MFA student at Butler University.