Ghazal of the Month for August

Anthony Robinson

Couplets for the Living

This linoleum arroyo's been swept clean.
A lizard meanders through the dark, the red and green.

Not the god of the dead but of the living—
Yeah sure, the grocer nods. Bottle imps and backyard swings.

Put your roots down, boy. Stay awhile, sit back.
Summer doesn't forget, the leaves remain black.

Fall through Central Park, fall in a wide vat—the Everglades,
Oaxaca in the autumn, the cold high Cascades.

Orthography has a certain taste in one's mouth, so
like nipples, half-set eggs, sand, the sand, oh!

Four wishes: to never have to say I love you, a crystal windowpane,
all weather aluminum siding at an affordable price, cocaine.

Death is a thing so ordinary. A black file cabinet; a sad,
leggy ballet dancer, a trio of hazelnuts. Crazy what we could have had—

Write to the poet

Back to The Archives Page