THE LEPER ADDRESSES THE DEAD HORSE HE FOUND IN THE ROAD
Dear
sister, you should know
that
I understand the need to run,
to
cut yourself open on barbs
and
write a goodbye note in blood
on
a splintered fence post,
to
escape the tilled earth and
a
life that offers oats so seldomly.
I
stand beside you, lay my hands
upon
your still-warm rib cage,
and
breathe in the steam lifting from
your
wet skin in the cool night air.
I
am drawing you into my body,
saturating
my blood in your sweat.
There
was something broken inside you
long
before the junkie crashed
his
truck into your flesh.
There was something worse than fractures.
It
was a hollow place in your stomach
that
no dried grass could fill.
I
gather you in my veins and exhale
with
violence and hope that you find
a
current to drift lazily upon, that you find
a
row already plowed in which to rest your
cracked
hooves, that you are released back
into
the stars that gave birth to you—
just
so long as a piece of you stays here
in
my bone marrow, growing cell
by
cell into a new kind of majestic.
CHURCH
Lying
here in the dark moments before
our
days begin, I lay my hand on your
shoulder
and let your soft skin warm
my
tired and moody palm. I think of bird
song
and full neon blooms. I think of
your
face like the sun, your lips solar flares.
I
think of all the planets swirling around us,
the
stars like stained glass, the comets
like
hallelujahs, supernovas bursting
behind
your eyelids like fresh prayers.
ALL I COULD REALLY ASK FOR
If
you could, hold my remains
in
your hands like an offering
in
a slight breeze. Let me blow over
the
waters of Eagle Lake until
the
wind can no longer hold me.
Let
me float to the back banks
and
cling to the dark earth, and
a
year later go back there where
we
first began to crack open and
stretch
our many limbs across
one
another, where we first began
to
root into the soil and reach
for
the sun. Go back there and hike
to
the farthest point on the property.
Find
the youngest patch of weeds along
the
water’s edge. Stick your face
in
its feathered globe and inhale deeply
and
there I’ll be: something that
keeps
you alive, a tattoo etched
into
the flesh around your heart like
a
stick-tight seed that never lets go.
THE PEARL TABLET OF ATUM
I
have shed skin and hair and
phlegm
and teeth and irises.
I
am a raw shapeless mound of dark
grass
and reeds, my eyes burning
an
incandescent crystalline green.
Here I go,
ready
to slither into something new,
a
body built from head to heel by
my
own hand, the scales my own design
good
for snaking
across
a primed and empty sky.
ON THE BACK STOOP AS SPRING ARRIVES IN LEXINGTON
KENTUCKY
after James Wright
A
cardinal hops from the young rose bush
Amanda
planted last year to the privacy fence
between
us and the cul-de-sac of townhouses
and
duplexes. It blends with those hesitant
blooms,
that sky of cool blood.
The
backyard teems with life,
patches
of green growth and bulbs
and
unsure wood bees, birdsong and
the
calcified remains of leaves
I
left through the winter,
and
if I have not wasted my life
then
I have certainly left a rocky trail
littered
with unopened flower buds, drops
of
blood from thorns, dead branches
never
pruned. If only I had unbroken wings,
a
few hops and flaps and then the top
of
the fence and then beyond, my boys
watching
through binoculars, taking notes.
Sean L Corbin is the author of The
Leper Dreams of Snow (Finishing Line, 2018), and the self-published
chapbook Radiate (2020). His work has had the good fortune of being
presented in many venues. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with his wife and
sons, and is co-founder of the Milestone Art Collective.