no black dogThis is my illness
as a stranger might see it – smoke lifts from dead fires rained out in thin spires over windtorn blue pines, and, so black, her belly in the river still enough to miss her a cow moose breathes. Cold coast marsh fog brackish; no sound here in untrue wilderness. My unyielding boreal is not imagined. This place is no refuge. Surefooted, she moves to the reeds dark water rushes down her flanks but soundless. A loon’s haunting could make this air familiar but it hangs empty. So alive in windless chill steam rises from her steep withers, broad back. Always she comes to me. I am forever in blue pinepitch forest and I have no control. This time she comes gently: steps close, sighing ribs rise and drop against my arm. My hand on her granite shoulder, we walk. She does not always come gently. No black dog, I follow this cow moose into salt forest mist. She is huge, moody, and when she wants me, so soft. Velvet nose faces me. As all moose she is unstable unpredictable but she is mine as I am hers. There is only one truth in this: one day she will kill me and I will be grateful for all our moments even that one, even then. |
small merciesyou knock your hands full
with flowers & strange how more feeling blooms between us how your kisses linger in the green spilling two dozen mauve daisies in an old strawberry moonshine jar now repurposed a florist the great-aunt I was named for before & during the war when my father was tasked to pick the new dewcold forget-me-nots with his slender boy’s hands I saw him weep the first time in a hospital & I sat outside someone else’s door hidden by magazine & ballcap uninvited he refused my visits & we were both cowards when his devastated body could stand he went on painful will alone toward a shelf of forgottens of piled blooms for patients departed I watched him tender so the cut flowers & the pots of longer stays my father who I couldn’t claim bit through his lip in his war back to bed I was caught by a nurse who needled my longing I’ve never seen a bouquet last so long nearly dead I was sure this old man loved them back to life at the threshold of my door you lay a beardy kiss to my nape & watch as I repot the little fuchsia into orange clay & I love you more for not asking why this act makes me cry from the adulterer |
Amy Parkes attends the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in poetry. She is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and is currently working on a manuscript that reimagines mental health trauma and recovery in language uniquely rooted in Atlantic Canada’s landscape.