Verdad Magazine Volume 23
Fall 2017, Volume 23
Poetry by Dimitri McCloghry
Category Five
I want the old feeling to come back,
so I enlist the help of fire: tinder, dry wood,
a matchbox. Anything a man can find.
On the wrong side of town, a wind blows
through the projects, a crowd of wives clenches signs
more omen than mere protest. In their eyes, a rise
of traffic brings them to a still. But they’re clear
and not afraid. Walking into all of them would be
the easy way out. But what came to simmer is
now a high heat. The boats go out to sea because they’re
called. We watch rubber burn and people flee from
what they don’t understand. Across from us, the power
lines begin to sag because they’re not ready. I click a lighter
to bring the calm. On the wall, four dolls and a graduate
degree. In the symmetry, you’re being brave. Lying down,
our hair begins to rust from sweat. Beyond the rain,
the light’s so red it summons all our blood. We break
flush as cards, but inside grow everywhere. Later,
when the rocking stops, we think it’s over. But in the lane
of your lips, the cars sound lethal, and I go to meet them.
Thermal
Not always the curtain’s heaving,
But the inexplicable silence after
It’s finished, ashamed of me
Watching. There’s a body
In all things, another exhibition
Waiting to happen. This time,
I want it slower: the air calm,
A few hints to let me know
It’s getting started, the fabric
Turning into itself how waves do.
But the vein of thread always
Comes apart and twists back
To the spool that held it
From my mother’s hand.
That day, for some reason
I can’t remember anymore,
She threw it together
Stitch after stitch, as I tried
To control my temper,
The warm bells of blood
Ringing in my neck. Heat
Everywhere. The kind that chokes
Without asking. Her
Telling me to make peace
With it before she died.
All these years, I’ve been trying.
The air becomes her whisper
And suddenly, I am the curtain,
A falcon rising,
The current pulling me to fire.
Samaritans
I.
You were seven. You were shirtless
by a river. You were shirtless
by a river and foaming
at the mouth as you shook.
If we don’t take him,
nobody will. A man nodded
and agreed. You’d been trying
to sleep, felt yourself cradled
by a woman with many jaws,
all of them heavy on your chest
before the storm. Rain mixed
with the pooling foam.
You’re okay now,
don’t worry, we want you.
Each reassurance grew louder.
You couldn’t blink.
Lying still, you tried to speak.
The mouths picked at you like birds.
II.
Years later, the mouths went
quiet. You needed comfort,
but nothing made room
for the air-conditioned air
fostering your flesh.
You tried to forget it all,
skip the fierce, filthy river
of everyone,
but no one could strip you down,
or torture you into submission.
Everything you wanted whispered
a few lies. Clouds were being
summoned. Downstairs,
your father’s hands were stained
with turpentine, a dirty angel
haloed by his own doing.
He was on the couch, asleep.
Looking down, the years disappeared
like parents. You remembered
old arguments. Setting the table,
your thoughts were a pack of wolves.
They wanted blood
you did not have. Across
from you, your mother coughed,
asthmatic. In her hand, a glass trembled
as if fearing a soprano.
Everything was ready to give out.
III.
You’re lighter. Flocks
still dream of your shoulders:
hair combed back without hint of water,
your slick, manic heart
taxing itself against
the shirt that jailed it, your eyes
fixed on what brought you here,
always watching.
In the domestic ritual,
your parents renew their vows:
his slacks billowing
in the wind, her hair a pyre
begging to be lit.
On the steps, they go up
but never come down, saying
I do, I do. In their wake,
you watch them dance:
your father dark
but tender in his own way.
And your mother, unabridged,
inhales the light.
Aubade in Which the Mare Begins to Bleed
You don’t have a single, wicked bone anymore, but I can hear
the danger in the way you say it. Above Rob’s body,
your face bleeds through the polish, the casket cool water,
and for what it’s worth, I know you still love him. Bending down,
we’re alone, what’s left of him a lake you begin to drink.
None of us can bring him back, but the way you shake,
I know you want to. The way the trucks sob on the freeway,
I know they do too. Southbound, the town’s horses follow us
through pastures as if one of their own is coming home.
And the churches plaguing the landscapes have fences
even more electric than the ones we pass. Each overgrown billboard
begs me to know peace, though the truth is, there’s nothing inhumane
about this feeling: how the ivy is your hair. How there’s sugar in holding on.
That there’s a devil inside me, but I’m breathing easy.
Body Roll
Mid-sentence, we’d almost died on the overpass,
and part of me deserved it the way I’d raised my voice
at you. Behind us, the car seemed a rumor. Those days,
none of us were good with second chances. I couldn’t touch you,
but not for lack of trying: you shook imperceptibly, almost hummed
in your seat. I figured it was the narrow miss we’d just avoided,
so I let you be, and we sat there alone on the banks of the road
watching the tracer fire of cars threaten the space around us.
It was like nothing I’d ever imagined: you gripping the phone
like my head, hard, without any sort of pretense you knew
what you were doing. Me, a bullet in the chamber of the car,
wanting you to say something. Whatever you could have
said never came. Only the blaze of your screen fading as your breathing
grew slower. Wave after wave, your skin waned in the night
in that position sleeping bodies so perfectly assume, and I wondered
if this was how it’d happen years from now, that this was a run through
of the day we’d meet our maker, ready or unready. And leaning over,
wishing I’d been more gentle, I woke you without meaning to
and you were quiet, not believing it was really me there,
an ultimatum waiting. I thought and then didn’t. My lips swerved
towards yours, saying, baby, letting myself go not unlike you had,
kissing you an apology as the interstate grew wilder.
BIO: Dimitri McCloghry is a 2013 graduate of Flagler College in Saint Augustine, Florida, where he studied under poet Liz Robbins. Previous poems have been accepted by The Flagler Review, Common Ground Review, Oxford Magazine, Paperfinger Magazine, Studio One, Ellipsis, Permafrost, and are forthcoming in several others.