Poetry | Page 14 | wisconsinacademy.org
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Poetry

Draw a line to five, when Frank Bitsueis hauling water from the well then counthis living grandchildren and divide themby the ones who chased sheep into the rain.Subract the crash. Add summers and sleep of

I guess you didn't get my letter, since youdied before I put it in the mail.But maybe that's OK—I mean, whatwas left to say anyway? Confession (I neverenjoyed hunting, or peeing in public)?

In cold darkness    calling from tree to treeLaughing at    our foolish dreamsCrooning love    in a long lost keyFeathers at once    oil slick and tricksterSwitchblade beaks

Born in an Illinois barn,

that two-headed calf

 

became a coin Frank flipped

through World War Two,

 

judging heaven from 

a foxhole. “God loves evil…

 

Only one night we watchedthe full moon remember the tops of the trees,

I loved the words, the names,when I was a boy whenhis blue eye turned meto the muscular heft of arms,Winchester and Remington,

Let your dog runsee where it goes

what it turns upwhat it brings back

a hollow yellow balla blue baby shoe

a rabbit-skin glovethe thumb torn off

a shimmering star-ling fluttering in

Kristen (my to-be bride) Peil (daughter to Loren and Annie) called me atwork (a vacated dental office complete with circular carpet stain in the chair space).

The sun rose to meet me late.Pimpled and miserable under July sheets,I had too many brothers with fistslike pistons, a mother who made meiron or dust or leave her alone:she had a headache.

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