Saturday, September 24, 2011

B.D.Feil: Four Poems

 

 

I’m A Fool




            It doesn’t matter that I know better
that I know history teaches that history teaches

that history teaches or can feel it undigested
sitting in my bones hollowed out and ignorant

or am graced with the goddamned sense
that God graced a goddamned goose

the itch becomes too great
the death of winter too new

the first green weekend of May too pulling
I dig in slap-happy in rows lost in mulch

wandering amid mounds yet frost teaches
that frost teaches that frost teaches that I’m a fool



Not This God


In my perfecting world
I would release the trees
from the woods
by first cutting the vines
that run up their trunks
and hang to the ground

what god would create the tree
only to slowly strangle it?

not this god
not this god




Giblin’s Grove




Set me down in Giblin’s Grove
the corner closest the coming storm
set me down in open wicker
let the wind sow me
beneath the redbuds

suffer me no pretensions
no need to balance the wicker
on heads of bare-breasted virgins
no hanging of black crape
no systemic scattering

only burn me let me blow
let the wind take me where it will
like the first spring light coaxes
the redbuds from wet winter woods
thirsty to be first tight purple nipples
erupting randomly stubborn to go





Korea 1950-1953




I knew the veterans of that conflict to be a bit lost
office managers filling station owners
door-to-door salesmen scoutmasters
brown shoes with drab green suits on Sunday
five o-clock shadow at eleven a.m.
tape on eyeglasses
missing gas caps
neat but incomplete stacks of National Geographic
living rooms hung with the smell of bacon
cement blocks laying around to no good purpose
Blatz Beer
Tab Cola
always the wait for checks to clear and rides to come
maybe a wife maybe not either way
owners of the ugliest dogs in America
dogs that would never come no matter how loudly called
how insistently how pleadingly
they just would not come


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BD Feil has credits in New Plains Review, Chaffey Review, and Margie. He lives in Michigan with quite the brood.

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