There’s No Ignoring It Now

BY JEREMY MICHAEL CLARK

For days, doubt struck as does lightning
across the span of night. Illuminated that way,

how did we cross the river? One stone, 
then another. The silence between us a keyhole 

through which I peeked & found you teasing
off your robe. Love? If it exists,

it’s the uncertainty one feels before a thunderclap,
after the sky’s gone dark again. O prick

of hope—I am too numb. The stir of weaker
creatures seeking safety: from afar, one could

call it beautiful. Even if you can’t,
I recall those mornings, the dappled light

spat across my cheeks. When you disrobed
before the window, whose eyes did you hope to catch: 

mine, or your own, reflected in the glass?
Before the owl swoops in & snatches it up, 

before it’s dead, when a lone mouse hesitates,
then steps into the clearing, is that faith, 

                                               or foolishness?
  

Jeremy Michael Clark‘s poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Poem-a-Day, West Branch, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. He received an MFA from Rutgers University-Newark. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, he lives in Brooklyn.

[Purchase Issue 22 here.]

There’s No Ignoring It Now

Related Posts

"kochanie, today i bought bread" Book Cover

September 2023 Poetry Feature: Uljana Wolf

ULJANA WOLF
legnica your direction is uttered: night halfnight / legnica your sirens rise in the gate-keeper's lodge / and keep the flag on all clear: /            yellow yellow the direction’s right / a crooked wave the gate the cross / legnica in singsong of tracks land trickles away / legnica your sky

Poetry Feature: Poems from the Immigrant Farmworker Community

MIGUEL M. MORALES
Days into the promise of a new year, resolutions plentiful, blossoming, / seven farmworkers were shot and killed harvesting mushrooms in Half Moon Bay. / Those of us who sprouted from families, whose hands and backs worked the land, / waited for news of our farmworker siblings.

A White House against a blue sky, with a watertower on top.

Two Poems by Liza Katz Duncan

LIZA KATZ DUNCAN
First the marsh grass came, then the motherwort, / then bitterberry and honeysuckle. Blackbirds, / gulls and grackles built their nests. / Mourning doves call from the eaves / of the old factory, closed during the Depression.