Grace

 

Mark DuCharme

 

 

 

 

  Give what you can. Is that all

    All that you can say

      So little. We all die

        Someday. What you do

          Will follow you

             All the way through

               This notice of hard times

 

            Live as you must

          Dream. The law is too little for giving

        Let boats fail.

      Their tidy fortunes

    Now are packets of straw

  When the skin’s a little rough

The weather still knows what to do

 

  Like birds in unison

    Over a great distance, diving

      From balconies in late summer

        With all the icemen watching

          Watching most attentively

            From the safety of squadrons

              Where grace is often strained

 

            By divisiveness, netting

          Corrosive boundaries

        All of which are tainted

      While silence is butchered

    By maniac soundtracks

  Sunshine as malice

For the acquitted

 

  Those who forage among checkpoints all day

    Even in winter

      Where there’s no tomorrow

        Until the sun’s captured

          Pinnate city references

            Sleep or survival

              Help is minimal

 

            Talk is weaving

          Listen or leave

        By noon’s slow varietals

      Whose enablers are not mine

    On a distraught Thursday

  In February, tentative

As a complex ally

 

  Chiding you with geese

    Whose rapid tongues thwart civilian envelopment

      In the dark, requiring

        Esplanades & brackets

          Where police grasp ants nimbly all day

            Drowning the word-animal in correct malice

              Even hungry farmers still refuse to name

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark DuCharme’s newest collection is Thousands Blink Outside, published in 2024 by C22 Open Editions.  Other recent publications include Here, Which Is Also a Place from Unlikely Books; Scorpion Letters from Ethel; and his work of poet’s theater, We, the Monstrous: Script for an Unrealizable Film, from The Operating System.  His poetry has appeared widely in such venues as BlazeVOX, Caliban Online, Colorado Review, E·ratio, First Intensity, Gas, Indefinite Space, New American Writing, Noon, Otoliths, Shiny, Spinozablue, Talisman, Typo, Unlikely Stories, Utriculi, Word/ for Word, The Writing Disorder, and Poetics for the More-Than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary.  He lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA. 

 

 


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