May
We Speak to the Lodger / May We Drink from the Well
Our choice of conveyance
proved faulty, died a quarter
across the Mojave. We
camped in its shadow,
harvested the meat, stayed
as unobtrusive as we could
in the dark, the laughter
of children on the wind enough
to stone us into silence.
Steak and eggs each dawn
not enough to make up
for the frayed nerves,
the unbearable lack of traffic
on what was once a highway.
Your
Call Cannot Be Completed as Dialed
Those golden moments they
promised us in a thousand
eighties TV commercials are
as tangible as the gossamer
against your lips as you turn
circles with your knuckles
against every sore spot
in Clackamas County, but
an alternate Clackamas
County that exists only
in Mississippi, or perhaps
only in our heads. It asks us
if we've written any good
villanelles lately, if daikon
is in season, whether we can
hear the sounds planets make
as they drift through clouds
of methane, sulfur, magnesium.
Robert Beveridge lives in Akron, outside Cleveland, Ohio. Poems
appear in Bond Street Review, Live
Nude Poems, Down in the Dirt, Pink Litter, The Ignatian, Page and
Spine, The Pointed Circle, YuGen, etc.