Four Palimpsests
Aaron Bauer
Palimpsest of Your Last Smile
A little over half
is the
hear and see.
The Halfway House. You
hear the tramps
gathered.
You will
hollow, wedge yourself
into hearing the jubilant
hundred years.
Alpine grass
watered by a snow-field.
People
hear drums.
So much.
Here was that queer
moving abroad. The humming-bird
which performs
to hear.
Palimpsest of America
Use the wings
the red-shafted flicker’s
wings. They should look
like they have already.
Do not deny your half-brother
then, and
treasures.
Here is what you see:
numberless farms,
mechanics,
lakes,
mountain chickadees,
acclivities.
Mountain sides
are lyrical
dresses over
the train’s rigid stanza.
Palimpsest of the Singer
Of
ballad-singers
of mountains
whose nests I see in stores.
He asked
nothing
of the pines,
ravines
holding silent
converse as identity forms.
Please, please
he blushes
as blood begins
to drip.
Palimpsest of Patriotism
And many more
rest in the
Halfway House.
A spot on the ground
one hundred years
that I decided to sweep up
indicating people
like a banner, like
a flag, like a false peace
hidden beneath an over-arching
side of
history on the cusp
of memory.
Aaron Bauer is a Pushcart-nominated poet and educator living in Colorado. He received his MFA from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. His work has appeared in Prism Review, Inertia, Poemeleon and others. He has served as Editor for Permafrost and is a Contributing Editor for PoemoftheWeek.org. His chapbook Colloquy of Sparrows is available from Blue Lyre Press.
