JEREMY ALLAN HAWKINS
About the Coming Down
this is my house about loneliness
the rooms open so you can see all the reindeer
I haven’t wished much in it
but flowers keep growing in the doorframes
eat one & nothing happens
eat two & the wood begins to talk
you can see what it says from the hill
amoebas of smoke swim out from the windows
everyone is inside making happy
redundant as the grazing reindeer
& I am learning how to winnow
because several neighbors have requested it
nothing is projected before Christmas
except a few deaths by icicle
that will separate some of us
from the spreadsheets of likelihood
there were drugs once but they made us fat
which is good for winter
the bartender weeps
because weddings remind him of his drunk
& cold as we are we don’t care
to leave him any company
a van warming up on a snowy driveway
is a deathtrap waiting to slip town
new tactics must be found
to keep us from sinking into sleep
so I am sculpting a hearth
to hold our collection of miniature boots
they are tramping all over us again
penguins crossing an ice floe
one of them goes off alone
then one of them goes off alone
198 The Paris-American
this is my house about loneliness
the rooms open so you can see all the reindeer
I haven’t wished much in it
but flowers keep growing in the doorframes
eat one & nothing happens
eat two & the wood begins to talk
you can see what it says from the hill
amoebas of smoke swim out from the windows
everyone is inside making happy
redundant as the grazing reindeer
& I am learning how to winnow
because several neighbors have requested it
nothing is projected before Christmas
except a few deaths by icicle
that will separate some of us
from the spreadsheets of likelihood
there were drugs once but they made us fat
which is good for winter
the bartender weeps
because weddings remind him of his drunk
& cold as we are we don’t care
to leave him any company
a van warming up on a snowy driveway
is a deathtrap waiting to slip town
new tactics must be found
to keep us from sinking into sleep
so I am sculpting a hearth
to hold our collection of miniature boots
they are tramping all over us again
penguins crossing an ice floe
one of them goes off alone
then one of them goes off alone
198 The Paris-American
Jeremy Allan Hawkins was raised in the New York Hudson Valley. He is an alumnus of the US Fulbright Program and the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project. His poetry has recently appeared in Tin House, Waxwing, Harvard Review, Ninth Letter, and other journals. He is currently based in France.