The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Sarah Estes Graham

SUBURBAN VIEW

A couple stand aimlessly
over the foot of their bed,
watching themselves tangle
in the bare sheets.

Chaos a sexual luxury
afforded early in a relationship,
no children.
Entrapment, a favored anger,
arousing, solid.

God shoulders a burden
in the foreground,
hungry for attention—
for anything, really.

Peers, sighs,
desperate to save His reputation.
The parents and house
turn mightily on their foundations
as if staged, hinges glistening with sweat.

So warm here.
The latest in theater soft-ware.
No lovers no children no god
no raccoons with rabies,
whispered hairs of spring bleeding

into summer, into the worn fall.
Choices spin like roasting hens.
An eternal display of spitfire,
grocery lanes, shrieks and fast cars.

The enraged lovers
would like to own one another,
something anyhow.
God in the helpless corner—

They turn on him,
as to a woman, a child
and move.


BLACKFEET
 
All my want and indecision,
days wandering the far fields of faith,
the hungry winters of infant hands
 
going after the mobile, day and night,
then thought, then nothing—
a lover rolled over the guilty hours. 
 
Now a pudding, sweet and thick.
Now a dandelion, mint-leaved and dark.
 
Long swallowed the sensual forms