Poetry
Two Poems By Melissa Reeser Poulin
One body I’ve seen enter earth whole.
Another burned, sifted coarse and heavy
into tin, sticky-scattered to the wind.
In the graveyard, it begins to snow
into the hole I’ve dug in our heart
with talking, around the open wound
of our certain, unknown deaths.
I know you want to live forever
in the canyon we love. Love, you think
that now we have no more secrets,
but I am frantic among these snowflakes.
How will I find you?
What is a canyon when you are gone?
Tidepools
I race against confusion here on earth
under the sun, on this side of birth,
where one half of truth, like a tide, seems best
at first, the better to harvest an exposed shore—
but tested with time, I feel the bottom give,
faint hunger for the seashape in between,
blurred vision of how fleeting and deep it is to live,
each moment fractured, fractal as a crystal
grain of sand—and grasping at the waves’ fingers
scraping past, I ask for anything,
want everything, watch nothing last.
Melissa Reeser Poulin teaches English and creative writing in Portland, Oregon. She is currently co-editing Winged, an anthology of new literature on honey bees.
