Original Poetry
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Summer’s Last Exhale
Summer’s Last Exhale How it shifts in a flash, the sun’s face bled to the edge of anemia, and I can stand under its living stare and not wither. Half a fortnight ago and just clipping shrubs would see my shirt soaked with salty sweat, but now my toes are numb and all has moved winterward. Jinx the fake heeler sits hard by my feet, spots like bullet holes along his flank, and I wonder what arcane and occult runes I might discover if I connected them in a certain way, perhaps using my sinister hand? At least I wouldn’t have to fear immolation as a witch, because witches have…
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Nineteen
Nineteen I am standing, I am watching on the strait of southern grass through which the fickle current of fogs undulates in the early part of day before the skyfire lifts enough to sear it off. I do not notice the hawks above until I see my dog’s muzzle tracking them; the most sky-aware dog I’ve ever seen, heart all witched with things that glide and soar and perch and sing. We move along and bees begin their sorties across our path, seeking the remaining sweetpea and Rose of Sharon, saddlebags packed with gold, hourglass ever before them as they try and outfly the time when frost will sheet their…
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Last Week Of Spring
Dog in my rear-view His stare pleads with me to stay But he will wait there. Black cows belly deep In the jade-surfaced stock pond Comfort found, taken. Deer leaps in my path Legs trembling, eyes beseeching Go romp one more day. ~ S.K. Orr
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Easter, A.D. 2020
Easter, A.D. 2020 So this is what legacy looks like The offspring of those who raised hymns while lions Tore their holy flesh now cower within Their antiseptic catacombs, heroes Devouring the crumbs of Nero’s hourly updates. Will they write epistles on toilet paper? Will they anoint themselves with hand sanitizer? They may as well — such empty sacramentals Well depict the razed rubble of faith. ~ S.K. Orr
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Transfer Of Ownership
Transfer of Ownership He signed the title, handed over the keys Watched the old truck roll across the grass Then saw the nose-prints, felt his heart seize Her last memento on the passenger window’s glass. ~ S.K. Orr
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Woes Rise
Woes Rise Is it a good hour for praying? Aren’t my hands folded right? The face of your boy rubs the pad of my thumb The corpus knows just what I’m saying Here, in the golden dark, smoking Woes in tendrils rise to Cause a watching spider to cough Upon his hidden wagon-wheel In my not-so-secret chamber. ~ S.K. Orr
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Finally, Exile
Finally, Exile No living man can fault me For the strange, strange books I’ve read They joined to me so softly Not one was scrawled in red And I took them up with trembling And I put them down so cold My pious mind dissembling While I stood outside the fold. ~ S.K. Orr
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New Each Year
New Each Year The first day of school each year and my attention was up front, not on my teacher but on the blackboard. Was it possible to get it that clean with a bucket and sponge, or did they coat it with some special chalk- defying paint? The moment would come when she – almost always a she – would take up the cigarette in her fingers and touch it to the coal surface and stroke it in rhythmic loops and sweeps across, and after that it was never pure again. The ghosts of all the parsings or diagrams would float beneath those things she gave each day, and…
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Thirty-Five Degrees
Thirty-Five Degrees Not quite rain yet not quite snow it drips from naked branches like the tears of winter’s grief below. The slumbering soil’s sense is heightened, soaked and silent in the weeks before the voice beneath it speaks. ~ S.K. Orr
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Sad Serene
The sad, serene lakes of my youth the cypress knees like temples rising out of the tea-brown waters, the golden ladder of heaven propped at a forty-five degree angle from window to table, and I could see graduated beings lifting and withdrawing in the moss. ~ by S.K. Orr