Uphill
Uphill disorients us,
our gnarly breathing,
not knowing how
her sentiment loads
her florid face, rotating
under leaves succumbed
to false serenity: Had to put
my dog down, she says—
like standing on her head,
blood rushing to her face,
eyes roiling leaves—hilly
footfalls, pausing, no trees
comfort her, no words, no
quiet, upside lying down.
I’m trying not to cry, to be
strong for her; her breaths
climbing (penumbral) outside
tree-line shadows, under four
legs that could no longer walk,
& I wouldn’t have it. Why do
our faces forecast flux
like grisly trees? Why do
leaves strip our arms bare?
I touch what feels like
the uphill part of her shoulder—
& we stand w/ out a future,
holding out for level ground.
Pleas
All the homes in a row cramp
themselves in various states
of painted flakes & demise,
vulnerable as my own foot-
steps, when I hear from inside
an adolescent girl scream
You don’t listen to me,
as five crows drive
the hardest nails,
according to no schedule,
starting/stopping the pleas
I want to give full attention
to—I wish I were dead! she yells,
as if to draw her line in the sand—
gambit was the word I was thinking
of, illusions of her smoking out
back, incensing her family lost
in a hopped-up, imaginative
state, a micro-community
of incidental smells & mold,
dusting the vine w/ cigarette
smoke—you are the one
to give air to this place, I
think, as she wraps her pleas
in whatever she can find
for a God rapt w/ us.
Jan Wiezorek writes and paints in Michigan. The London Magazine, Abstract Magazine, Minetta Review, Modern Poetry Review, The Passionfruit Review, Sparks of Calliope, and The Orchards Poetry Journal, among others, have published his poems. He taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago, and wrote the eBook Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011). Jan posts at janwiezorek.substack.com.
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