Poems from Two Beautiful Books: Hourglass Museum by Kelli Russell Agoden and Revising the Storm by Geffrey Davis

These two beautiful books came in the mail last week.  I have to post at least one poem from each, but it's hard to pick!

If My Life Were a Canvas,

It Would Be a Jackson Pollock Painty-By-Number

1 Blue:

Imagine this: you're spread across the page 

of a dream and it's morning.  There was a storm

last night and the robin's eggs have scattered

across the lawn.  Some broken, some not.

2 Yellow:

The sink is always full 

of disappointment.

Unnoticed daylight,

a measure of sadness--

chipped sunflower plates

overpowering the perfect

blue delphinium teacups.

3 Black:

Sometimes the crows remind us, we are only ink 

and paper.  Puzzles to solve, silver

to seek, and when the light dims, holes appear

against the universe, in tubes of paint

gathered from the barn--

something will be stolen

from someone else's nest.

4 White:

Book of ghosts.

Whispers and watermarks.

Whatever still reflects: paper;

waves, a dove suggesting God.

5 Orange:

A crowd of drunken lovers.  Newspaper

hats, new couples falling from couches and love-

seats---the pleasure remembered,

never the regret.

More than Forgery

I.

In middle school, I practiced
signing my father's name, for days,

filled empty sheets of paper secretly in class,
comparing his graceful autograph to the frauds.

The beginning tripped me up--the capital A--
his detail so hard to copy:  the tight flourish

of ink just before the first downstroke of the pen.
Because I worried over penmanship, because,

like him, I favored an unfinished cursive,
I watched my forgeries lean toward the real thing

before endorsing the backs of his V.A. checks,
piled up during the months he vanished into reaps

or chased fixes:  Pay to the order of  food to hush
our rumblings.  The checks kept us

in lights and warm water.

II.

                            Or the way my father
tapped his foot while playing the guitar; he kept

a different, distant beat---the one to play against.
THey lyrics he belted became wounds riding the air

and left me, the boy who wished and wept for birds,
fighting off tears so he would sing another hour.

By high school, I knew he'd left for good.
his A stayed in my hand.

It flares up in every Adam or Alinique
I write--in every love letter I end, Always yours.