Four Poems
by Chad Sweeney
Thanksgiving
Cornucopia
decomposing on
no table.
To eat
is to remember.
Derelict and frothing
my husband
dressed all in cartoons
left the party early
with Wittgenstein
enamored of a harelip thespian
the way gas inside its tank
leans at high tide.
Please, remember me!
We crossed the street together.
We shared a bus.
A man fell from a bycicle
as gracefully as he could
because his daughter was watching.
Where
Perhaps a woman is waiting for you.
In a turquoise mood. In a yellow car.
In the parking lot of a ghost town.
Where a flock of scarves is turning.
Where it’s sixty degrees inside the idea
and seven o’clock on the last day.
Where the children have misplaced your bones.
Where a glass anvil is falling
through atmospheres of language.
Journey to Detroit
They let me join the caravan
as far as Detroit.
I can play the zither, I said,
I can fix a camel.
At night the wives slipped away
from their tents and traded places.
They pretended to sleepwalk.
A great cry of love rose like washing machines.
Crucifixes lined the highways,
the towns emptied of thieves.
Gases issued from rain gutters
cast our hands in gold.
Of What Continues
Sun climbs its elevator shaft.
I promise.
Someone keeps pulling sky
past the screen door.
Let’s get married.
Pasture of vermillion grass.
Everything.
Let’s wrap each other in the great
quiet
where beetles tend to crab apples.
A yellow umbrella
stays lit in the storm.
