Napping at the Crossroads
All my best thoughts
are of nettles,
not the two or three stars
in the empty field
or the field or the wind
above making us
every minute. My best thoughts
aren’t of flowers or birds
or how they mean something
more than they are,
which is everything perfect.
I sometimes think of the sky
as a pail to carry
bruises in. Why that is,
I forget. But all my best thoughts
are of nettles and morning’s
bright breath whispering
come to come to.
Landscape
In the beginning
the sun seemed to molt
until it took on the sad
color of a horse after heavy rain
and then dust, and then
it wasn’t really the beginning, was it?
Because the imp grass
had been pushing up through soil
all along, while one
crow mocked the song of a jay,
who mocked the song
of a sparrow, who mocked a gull,
who flew over the trees
and saw nothing but its own
stiff pinions in the muted bark
of the pines there, standing
on their carpets of fallen needles
in a silence that goes
all the way back to the beginning.
Yes, the beginning.
CHRISTOPHER McCORMICK is a recent graduate of the MFA in creative writing program at Bowling Green State University. His work appears in West Trade Review, The Maine Review, and Beaver Magazine among other publications. He currently writes and teaches in Ohio.
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