The morning of. Through the window, the groan of the boat
relaxing in the sunshine, and a voice that beats like hell
at the door of the brain, like a mother-in-law in a parable
by Flannery O’Connor. See you how you feel
when you’re five hundred, he mutters, inflating the covers,
brushing the bony hand of death from his shoulders
and adding monkeys to chickens. Subtracting brothers.
In the wet palm of drool on the pillow, a face
tells him to practice. His beard is an ark that hovers
above the sighing sea of his chest, cracked and stale
as a box of saltwater crackers. The philosophy
of God in his head – a wild Monet that cackles
as he paints over Water Lilies in pure black. Finally,
poked in the eye by an alarm like fire, he stirs and shivers,
shakes off the night’s dew and grabs his cane and lumber.
The animals eat themselves as they shrink in their beds,
the sky opens and closes like the folding of an easel.
About the author:
Colin Pope’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Quarterly, Thieves Jargon, Underground Voices, Night Train, and Red Rock Review, among others. He has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes (for 2011) and he currently holds the Rose Fellowship from Texas State University. He is an editor at Front Porch Literary Journal and makes his residence in San Marcos, Texas.
