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.