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Three poems by DANNIEL SCHOONEBEEK

Poem Four Years Too Late


When a man with no memory goes out looking for a woman.

When he throws his boots in the fire the night he leaves. 

When he walks the wood to the wood where she was born.

When the wood’s as empty as his head was when he left it. 

When it’s winter and the burdocks catch in his beard.  
 
When the snow falls from the sky but the sky isn’t there. 

When the snow touches the wood and the wood disappears. 

When he calls their names but his footprints won’t follow.

When he eats a handful of snow and feels like a kid again. 

When he asks himself what year was it when I forgot.  
 
When I forgot I wasn’t a man and started to tell myself.   
 
When I started to tell myself the story I’m telling myself. 

When the girl in the story her footprints won’t follow.  
 
When her name’s as empty as the wood I was born in. 

When her hair fell like snow when snow falls into a fire. 

When a man with no memory goes out looking for a woman. 

  

40   The Paris-American

Les Fauves


Kid I’ll smear

dog blood

in your eyes

if I have to

and sorry

our bodies

grow fur

mine’s gray

and pelted

you’re slate

our flanks

sorry raw

they smoke

the sundown

long brother

don’t die

like our opa

our american

toad who 

scraped teeth

all his life

then croaked

no let’s run

bang our head

on this rock

and the scrub

grass in our

village licking

your meat

yes the sun

smokes them too

bang our head

don’t let’s wait

tie your rope

around a tornado

why don’t we

  

41   The Paris-American

Whole Foods

--for M. Gertzog

 
Officers please

should you

see a man

shoot past

you hair

on fire

what skin 
 
he has left

it peels

off his back

like cheese

cloth a pitch

fork stuck

in each thigh

and bag

after white

plastic bag

our swiss

ruby chard

our swollen

mangosteens

our chicory

root and his

rutebagas

the humboldt

fog he loves

his black

forest worms

our yellow

and red ones

our good

korean pears

his goat’s

milk gouda

his pignolis

olives so fat

you could

smother

your child

to sleep

with one all

units you

see him fire

our wild rice

from his sawed

off shotgun

pour nectar

down his

throat and chant

in some dead

language what

to your ears

you’d swear

it was lines

one and two

you learned

by heart

in grade

school man’s

first no

the fruit of

disobedience

that fair

tree the last

word who

speaks it

a black sleet

in god’s

land to wipe

out the kings

the line

how does

the line end

the night

who will

the night end
  


42   The Paris-American

Picture
Danniel Schoonebeek was born in the Catskills. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Boston Review, Fence, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Guernica, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, La Petite Zine, The Awl, Publishers Weekly, and elsewhere. He writes a monthly column on poetry for The American Reader, hosts the Hatchet Job reading series in Brooklyn, and works as associate editor at PEN America.


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