Brett Lauer’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly and Pleiades. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
A Vast and Insincere Frontier
For lack of
evidence you are given
an example of the world.
"Therefore the interior is dark"
and muscular with slippage, salt licks and elaborate hangings
lined with woodwork.
The moon is secondary
only to bronze
and unspecific black animals are gathered
near the pond. Little birds would be better.
Or midwinter moths
in the light, the scenery burns late.
And, For All They Cared
The mood, as with moon, was distant like discourse when forced upon each of the pretty ones. The eyes like all minor organs sag, sag and withdraw, withdraw into regret. To regret and become the looming of one another. Pray, lay a hand on those temples, sadly and momentarily for rest. For rest and peace, thank god, and for the terrain an open palm provides for as much. Build this fire for warmth, neither light nor sacrifice. And in each and every case, it was not enough to console. No matter how full or one-dimensional. No matter the telescope or hermeneutics. It was beyond "enthusiasm" or the madness that stalks on three legs. And terrible that you must first disappear from this scene for it to be recognized as such.
As Deriving From a Higher Cause and Not Human Effort
Even if they do not understand, the mothers could not appear more willing
to deport an umbrella term. And in the midst of this story, even before
we witness the ensuing hero’s face, there is a certain amount of symbolic dressing:
the button so wise with an emblem of a golden finch, the scarf
that so obviously protects the protagonist from drafts, the cane that is
just a dash too elegant to be efficient. Then there is the lengthy
three-page lineage of sons with a footnote that begins: "Apparently there was
something fanatic about apple picking with strangers that set the stage for this
child to be more and more in the company of strangers..." And indeed, a flock
of strangers is important for any story, particularly this one, when the boy
announces "The wolf shall sup with the tongue not the teeth." The world
can’t help but change from greenish to blue, a blue that will not rinse
and someone must be there to faint prophetically and then later record
how even the stoic trees seemed to bow slightly in the windless night.
Yes, it must be evening, at the very least. Though about the apples
they could be pears.