Finch, and: Sparrow, and: Ohio 13, and: Ohio 661
Rent from DeepDyve- Finch, and: Sparrow, and: Ohio 13, and: Ohio 661
Finch
Everything costs
some thing, some time, some one.
One is surely the number of beauty:
every flicker of wing is a whip. If beauty
reigns it reigns over the broken. The gold
is for falling, is for the brutalities you
hope won’t tarnish. The gold is for
quickening, is for never lifting above. . [End Page 59]
Sparrow
Sun says sing. Bird doesn’t want to.
Snowdrops bursting bursting up to die.
Sun says open. Bird won’t do it.
Chill wind combing, combing through
the dead. Sun says linger. Bird isn’t
listening. Wings beat harder, harder
now to die. Sun sings providence
and the bird says fall. [End Page 60]
Ohio 13
I am not convinced that this road leads although for miles it has followed me and I have watched it follow me as green grass grows and waits to be mowed, to send its sweetness to the sky. All along the way rails rust into walking paths and the houses crouch lower to the ground, which wouldn’t even sound if you put your ear to it. There’s nearly nowhere to go: only those distressed and tired soles tied down to grinding inevitability remain, though there is no train to threaten with its industry, with its sad dynamo. What luck is there here in choking lilacs, in herons no one sees wading in far waters like so many scarecrows struggling to dress for work because Dorothy swept away on a tornado and left them behind. [End Page 61]
Ohio 661
I haven’t a coin in my pocket to spare and it is powerfully dark outside my window tonight. Because I’ve been driving for hours past almost nothing, the roads are far too modest for lights or houses. And though I am a stranger passing swiftly through I know these roads, the way they insist upon night because you cannot see pain in the dark. All you can see are the painted wonders, soda machines oracular and insistent: they are the only beacons around. And if you had some quarters or some courage you’d pull yourself over even if what beckons is not your home, will not be your home. The roads will strangle you if you let them, so you just don’t stop, you will not stop, and you will not break down and pray to any other light. [End Page 62]
Joseph Campana’s work appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, New England Review, Gulf Coast, and TriQuarterly, among other publications. His first collection, The Book of Faces, is available from Graywolf Press. He is the recipient of a 2007 Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and is completing a book of poems called Sheltering Bough.
