Three Poems by Lawrence Eby

Lawrence Eby

Lawrence Eby

Lawrence Eby is the author of two books of poetry, Flight of August, winner of the 2014 Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and Machinist in the Snow, ELJ Publications 2015. His work can be found in Forklift, Passages North, Fourteen Hills, Thrush Poetry Journal, and others. He is the editor in chief of Orange Monkey Publishing, a poetry press in California.

Ancestry

If I taste the wind, you’re
there. If a drum beats in my body,
                      and a blue bird

            feeds on a young mouse,
the asphalt begs forgiveness. 

            You call
me to the surface of a rabid
                     bite on my mother’s
arm. Touch me with your
           spinning—dead pigeon
                      swept away
           under a concrete rug. The tragedy
is the music and you

unable to hear
              step over
the dog’s head and it
doesn’t stir.

 

 

 

Handfuls of Light

After Maggie Smith

In the quake light bolting down the sun
you are a gorge full of water—fish

full of stomach and salt, ingestion
             of a body called

tiger in the grass. You
             catch falling leaves
             embrace them, crisp

windfull of you, the autumn
of you, the underground
cavern and the bats it homes
             you. A highway

mouse nest in the quivering
field—you

you and the light you carry
a drink in your mouth
a stone.

 

 

 

What You Carry

A crow bites off its tongue. Your house
           sinks into swamp. Dream

birthed from a tree stump in the forest
           dead. You

carry a gravestone
           in a jean pocket. You’re
a movie from enough distance sweeping
           gravel into a horse’s mouth.

                             Juniper tree
engulfed in sandstorm, up-
root
                             window stain
torn wash-
cloth                     wrung.