Devin Johnston — Two poems
Accidental Species
Out of stir
de Soto leaps
the space of time
that labor brooks.
An exiled mio cid against
the bristling charge of
forward march,
he lifts a parrot-green beret
in umbrage at
the rising sun,
and sleeps away the afternoon
behind a school
gymnasium.
*
Who would have thought
Clemente High —
a bauhaus block —
would serve as aerie for
a red-tailed hawk?
Watch him parade —
in janizary pants
of feathers — through the yard:
winds rise, and he
who doesn’t need
to spit or clear
his throat, goes up.
Smoke
for Tom Raworth
What reveals the daily space
of the head hollowed out —
a concave bubble
on the surface of water —
as smoking on film
delights in the medium’s
own properties
of light and opacity?
It is something we cross
the shifting sands
to extinguish — days,
the rate of burning leaves.
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