Twenty minutes into a deep sleep

 

You pull me off the couch
at midnight
to go outside
and witness the blood moon,
the lunar eclipse

I promised you I would get up
so I meander slowly outside,
half awake
until the crisp air enters my skin

we stare silent
your finger looped in mine

I wonder about prophecies
shaped like small swirls
of fog and shadow

we are watching the midnight sky
being broken and reassembled
all in a matter of moments

the tribunal of trees
hiding the edges of an unknown
forests of stars

the news stories say
“this is the lunar eclipse,
so it’s okay to stare straight into it”

and we do
until gravity falls
back
onto itself

until I free fall beside you
as we sleep

the room dark
and iridescent
all at once
 

 

 

Feast

 

There will be two meals
served at the dinner table tonight

the one with the teal blue place settings
where the cracked shadows reside

the one you will spoon feed
to your mother who has already died

the place where the tablecloth is creased
just so – where scorn hides in the folds

the legs of the table will shudder
as if the mahogany
were only memory

the glasses will clank in unison
at the table
even when
there is no earthquake

when everyone has gone
to the porch
you will finally
tend to the second meal

the one you will feed
to the rabid dog
under the table

the same one
you kill each night
before the dream ends
 

 

 

Silences

 

you fear the short silences
the small slots you fall through

you tip toe across the muted paths
of conversation
as if nothing matters

you try to keep up –
say things that make you sound
– comfortable

but secretly
you dread the severed silences
watching your own words fall from a cliff
and drown in their own blood

you prefer the long eloquent silence
of a tango

the long languid ledge
of a wordless day

you wait patiently on the veranda
to hold hands
with the cool side of midnight

you tap your foot
on the stony edge of night
until the earth stops breathing
so you can finally reveal
your forked tongue
and call out
in a century that is not your own
and hope someone hears you
 

 

 

Two Deaths

 

When the person you ran from
and the person you ran to
die in the same month

you spend your time
examining the geology
inside a broken mountain

you spend time
setting up safe camps
in the dark night
calling for someone
to find you

you write “help”
across the legible places
in the sheered stone

you repel
against the flat wall
of yourself

you travel light,
drop the heaviest gear
down the steep cliff

and hope
you remember
how to find
the next foothold

 

 

Connie Post served as Poet Laureate of Livermore, California (2005 to 2009). Her work has appeared dozens of journals, including Calyx, Comstock Review, Cold Mountain Review, Slipstream, Spillway Spoon River Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Verse Daily. Her first full length Book “Floodwater” (Glass Lyre Press 2014) won the Lyrebird Award.  Her other awards include the 2017 Prick of the Spindle Poetry Competition, the Caesura Award and the 2016 Crab Creek Poetry Award.