ON THE WING THE HOUR
Out of one day they count
ten hours or two days or whatever is longest
until the medicine is delivered
until the bed folds up
until they’ve canceled and punctuated
goodbye and kept saying in sleep
we’re capable of this sort of tearing
of ruin of the cost of the body its pity
of the ropes of our previous lives
no one is talkative after the frothed
orange beverage is sucked
through the bendable straw
after Mozart’s bassoon concerto
continues to adagio and the news
of Moore’s tornado after the cancer beast
has napped and meanwhile knitted
more cells and the house quieted
after the laundry and other long moments
after the scope after probe of her abdomen
after a weakening
after the sheets have been cleaned
and they smoothed them after
sleeper’s flare after night thoughts drift
to the small motion of sun on a palm
in the thickness of this
a tree might drop a petal
after one point and another
after the terrible paragraph of leaving
of losing then next year only seeds
A SHADE HAS FALLEN
Now I’m nude on a queen’s bed, embroidering stitches
against hollows, then decorating stars
with lustered fingers. I take off my worry.
Silence etches the neighboring dunes, washes up
to the cottage, wedges doors open.
Because light pales to bone,
I wonder if I’ve actually awoken.
A week’s worth of upcoming echoes
in a room with simple carpets and stairs
that keep repeating.
Everything will be restored. No more longing
on white keys with a red carriage return.
No more updraft to signature, no more ending
a phone call with multiple sign-offs.
When he arrives, there will be no first and next.
No sort of knowing but the mouth
entangling gullies of veins. Outside, the waves
always licking and wrecking the ocean.
________________________
Lauren Camp is the author of two volumes of poetry, most recently The Dailiness (Edwin E. Smith, 2013), winner of the National Federation of Press Women 2014 Poetry Book Prize and a World Literature Today “Editor’s Pick.” Her third book, One Hundred Hungers, was selected by David Wojahn for the Dorset Prize, and is forthcoming from Tupelo Press. Her poems have appeared in Brilliant Corners, Beloit Poetry Journal, Linebreak, Nimrod, J Journal, and elsewhere. She hosts “Audio Saucepan,” a global music/poetry program on Santa Fe Public Radio. www.laurencamp.com.
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