GARY MCDOWELL is the author/editor of eight books, most recently Aflame (White Pine Press, 2020). His work has appeared in The Nation, American Poetry Review, Southern Review, New England Review, and many others. He is Professor of English at Belmont University in Nashville, TN.
I love you fatback and unparalleled,
this whisper, this fruit no bird
will touch once aground. Acid and oak,
must and pine. Beak to the soil,
upbranch and downspout, a bluejay
flutters from deck to stone, stone
to lawn, and the breeze gives voice.
What I wouldn’t give to talk back,
what I wouldn’t give to have something
to say. What I did give: Fifteen years
and a body unresolved. Meat and bones,
dear unwanted comings, it’s not that
I don’t appreciate you, it’s that I
don’t want our last weather to be
what remains when water makes
mirrors from granite. Grind and grind,
a cavalier of the ruin. Hello trees,
hello telescope, hello creeping grave-
yard of branches: Nothing squared
equals nothing, but a fruit from your
limb equals this slow dance I wish
would end. In other words, a crown
of dandelions, a silent movie where
the hero knifes himself, a birdhouse
full of pebbles. My daughter teaches
me about light, how fast, and like that,
I'm a moon orbiting too far to touch.
Volume 15.1, winter 25
Gary McDowell
