CHARLIE CLARK

What the Backyard Will Not Give


Not doubloons. 
Not carrots. 
Not trees. 
Therefore 
not shade. 
Therefore 
not rest.
Not even 
the dream of it. 
So not grace. 
Not even green. 
It will give dust. 
It will give grease. 
It will give up 
the greasy 
fettered feathers 
of birds busily 
becoming heat. 
But not worms. 
Not enough, 
at least. 
Nor the promise 
of lushness 
their thriving 
might provide. 
Therefore 
not daisies. 
Nor tulips. 
Therefore not 
the eye’s relief. 
It will give haze. 
It will give glass. 
Flung in two 
thousand
arcing shards.
It will give 
a modern history 
of trash.
Cups and plates 
of polystyrene 
and pine-scented 
hand-sized 
cardboard trees. 
It will give 
my daughter 
rashes, burns, 
and bleeds. 
So it will 
give grief. 
Enough to 
chafe on in 
the slotted 
August light 
and breeze. 
And stones. 
It will 
give stones. 
One whole 
rainbow’s 
ragged range. 
Shucked 
by boot toes. 
By fingers. 
By the trowel’s 
buckled blade. 
Enough 
to stack.
To study, 
catalog,
and grade. 
Though 
doing so 
will not bless 
this place.
Though I 
do not wish
to know
their names. 
 
  
139 The Paris-American

Charlie Clark’s work has appeared in Best New Poets 2011, The Missouri Review, Smartish Pace, West Branch, and other journals. He studied poetry at the University of Maryland and lives in Austin, Texas.

---

  Next week's poet:

 Gillian Cummings