The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by G.F. Boyer

Fable

We ate cherries from a blue bowl
while tendrils of ivy twisted
through the bedroom window.

Nothing stirred but the cats
as they came and went. Outside,
tomatoes slumped to earth in leggy weight.

A brutal wind rose
and the heater sighed like a woman
as we railed and wept in our crystal cage.

And we skimmed the air
like birds asleep in flight—
each with one eye open, only half aware.


How It Will Come

Like flat stones skipped across a pond:
swift, glinting.

Scattered, a calamity,
a chastisement, a milkweed seed.

Like the dung beetle,
turd-obsessed, cherishing the worst, the waste.

Or the falcon, who believes the hood is night.

Like me, perfectly formed,
held inside my mother, drifting toward the world,

toward long blue shadows over frozen snow
on the year’s coldest morning.

Like my foolish self: bumbling, haggard, worn,
full of hope, helpless.

Like a guided missile out of fog.
Like the silence of a silent, silent God.


Lifted Up

In my best pink dress, in our usual pew
I drew all I saw:

Dad preaching
with his glasses upside down,

ladies’ beads and feathered hats,
a surround of Sunday finery.

We sat for a brimstone-
ridden while, then stood to sing.

Did the muggy drear part briefly?
Were the sheaves brought in?

No. Instead,

the room
dimmed, sparks
of light swam
into blackening view—

I came to on cool wood,
weightless, a wounded flamingo.

The faces, God’s people,
floated above,

staring down
in innocence and sin.



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