- Hosanna, and: To an Elephant Heart Plum, and: Eclipse
Hosanna
Look again in that channel. Alone this time. Mask defogged
with my baby shampoo. Breathing through a narrow tube, finless. Head-down, tail-up,
the two razorfish—like poles impaling horses on a carousel—will still be rising
and falling over the meadow of turtle grass. You know
it all gives way to— the clarity made us, me, ache. Or return
to our watchtower. Take in its fortress, star-shaped, very old. Once, on a day-trip, we ran around it.
You were far ahead, a blur, crying out or singing. [End Page 433]
To an Elephant Heart Plum
Gone alreadyare the peachesthat stung my
mouth; and your tree,once pickedclean for prunes,
will have buck-naked branches.I hold you up to the glare
like a skull.For weeksthe farmer’s said,
“This’s theirlast week!”For now, with maroon
splotches,yellow star-pricks,a hole furry
with mold, yourskin is a mapof another world’s
night sky.I take a biteto console us. [End Page 434]
Red juiceon my thumb,I want
a new life, an easydeath. No,suffering is good. [End Page 435]
Eclipse
An old hoofhoneycombed with bite marks,a forearm’s length of ropegoitered on one endin a knot:both are the departed pit bull’s toys.On the paththeir slight shadowsand ours are gray,not black,and getting grayer.Through the pinholed leaves of the plum tree,onto the wall,a hundredcrescents shine;they swayand peter out.Our star andour shadow die.Are restored. [End Page 436]
greg wrenn is the author of Centaur. He has received the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, as well as awards from the Poetry Society of America and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Best American Poetry 2014, The American Poetry Review, and The New Republic. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, he is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.