Lance Larsen

Channeling the Lesser Winged Gods

A swallow settles in a maple near 
my window and starts 
in on me as if to say turn off 

your damned radio 
I’m a living song that can hop and fly 
and copulate and sit 

on wet eggs I pushed
from my own body and comb 
the air for bugs I’m right here listen 

What Comes Back Driving across Texas at 3:00 AM

losing thirty-five dollars on my paper route 
then finding it the next afternoon  
wet with peach blossoms and slithery grubs
three deer scissoring into a clearing
shy as orphans dodging moonlight and God
the toads at the hotel in Florida 
how they hopped out of lushness and into 
the pool and I fished them out with a Newsweek
being spat on by Lady Macbeth as a groundling
at the Globe her bare feet splashed 
in blood a smiley face tattooed on her ankle
how I gripped the sides of the giant sea turtle 
like a sacred text and let her drag me deeper
into the shimmery blues off Laniakea
my father how we dressed him 
before his funeral first the left arm through 
the ironed sleeve then the right
cutting the slippery umbilical of my son
and expecting the lights in the room to go out
the listening place in the widow’s wall
where if you were nine and a breeze 
was blowing you could hear her sobs
my sister burying me at the beach legs arms
torso finally my face with a napkin 
over it the tantalizing drizzle of wet sand 
her saying hold still will you you’re not quite dead 

Back to Issue XI…