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Three poems by CHRISTOPHER DEWEESE

The River

It is a bad, bad business 
to walk to the river
expecting something casually spiritual
to cast aside your skin.
Rocks tongue the bloody light 
where I’ve been going,
a cheap motel on the other side
where the complimentary bibles 
have expiration dates
and the Danishes reflect my face 
in their glacial frosting.
We become magnificent 
as they crumple,            
bending in the fluorescence
our ancestors left us
to better see our cruel bodies.
Outside, the evening quickens
into a crooked line
of poorly-built fires,
as if the whole county were neck-deep 
in the so-called mystery
of what anglers do
after taking off their waders.
The mosquito-bit air 
darkens into night,
scuttling the distance
into many canoes between us.
Like a green villager,
I have confused the river 
for my friend.
I threw starfish 
into the wrong water,
mistaking what was potable 
for a stronger tide.
I might as well pardon my own history 
for bringing me here.
I’m sorry, darling, 
but where we’ve been 
is just no match 
for standing on this bank
flexing our muscles
until the sun jumps up like a fish
and the angry wind 
whips against the leaves,
the whole tableau 
uncertainly taking note
of where the river goes
and what it means
as, beside it, 
a dozen drunk survivalists 
unzip their camouflage 
to show us where they are
and what they have been hiding.




14    The Paris-American

The Cloud

The cloud is trying 
to hold itself together, 
and I am trying 
to hold up the cloud. 
Heavy and tired, I look around.
I drag myself across the rainbow,
a quiet exhibit 
immediately forgotten 
in the question of distance, 
how many miles it is 
between here and anything,
the sky a cliff 
all jump and floating, 
the miles just numbers 
hid between my breathing
and the real light stumbling 
like transparent fists 
through my window.
I want to grab the cloud 
and juice it down,
cut it into smaller pieces 
then stuff it in a blender.
The cloud is boneless. 
It’s getting closer, 
vibrating like a uvula 
in the handsome wind.
I breathe evenly. 
For a gangster, 
I’m getting pretty good at this.
It’s like breathing is a bank 
I’ve robbed so often
I’ve been named its president.
The responsibility soothes me.
Orphans depend on my decisions.
I look out the window.
I walk into the white building.



15    The Paris-American

The Island

Islands breathe themselves 
through the water
as if they are plants 
and the waves a season,
as if all they need 
is plenty of lava
to control their industry.
Like careful ingredients 
in a long imagined tragedy,
they invent their own excess,
raise their children 
to bob and batter 
against the dented shorelines.
I know the petrified trees,
the agony of seconds 
when the wind changes,
leaving only teeth 
to remember your lips by.
I brought this to the orchestra
because I hoped to sing lead,
but first I had to find 
a sort of atmospheric sorrow
buried in the rushes,
left hanging on the hanging lines.
I hoped to keep my own society
in the company of those men
who refuse to be evacuated
because they believe 
in a fate so complete
it needs them 
to stay and feed the animals 
others leave behind,
hushed in the sudden wild 
of terrible statuary 
a disaster soon becomes.
Along with the sky, 
all my life I have been arriving
too late, empty handed 
as the waves that wash away, 
stashing their own ghosts 
in the sound foam makes,
one hundred tiny mouths 
opening yet speechless
and then those terrible, quiet echoes.



16    The Paris-American

Picture
Christopher DeWeese is the author of The Black Forest (Octopus Books, 2012). His poems have  appeared in Boston Review, jubilat, and Tin House. He  teaches at Smith College.

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