CACHE LA POUDRE
Tonight the cicadas are deafening.
Nothing to do but lean into despair
the way one leans into a mirror.
All summer you’ve been dying
in the shopping cart of my mind.
I fill it up with bottles of vinegar.
The river is lonely. It has no home.
Soon your voice will be everywhere.
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ELIZABETH KNAPP is the author of The Spite House (C&R Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 De Novo Poetry Prize. The recipient of awards from Literal Latté and Iron Horse Literary Review, she has published poems in Best New Poets, The Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and many other journals. She teaches at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.
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Read more by Elizabeth Knapp:
Author’s Website
Poem in New Orleans Review
Poem at Literal Latté
Poem in Spoon River Poetry Review
Three poems in The Adirondack Review
Thick summer air / that warms what it chokes, and chokes what it warms. / The locked cage of a lover’s arms. And above us, the / cool prison of the Lord’s regard. What to call this - / the hatred of the earth-bound / for the sky?
I wanted to know how “good poets” /
turn pissing off of the back of a boat /
into something worth reading
I see Heathcliff /
slink out of the forest /
in the morning mist.
Fucked up that the loved ones /
all have to go and even more so /
the way they have to do it—
As in born in Florida, left Florida, came home /
and left again. Came home to die. As in here I’ll lie.
go on get /
outa here you fuck think im crying about her im not im not /
its about how i wasted my whole life
stalagmites like /
hands reaching //
for that sickness/
inside every human...
And so it waits, /
with the patience born /
from lying under a volcano
You’d sometimes flash your dick /
in bars for wild amusement and strip on stage. /
Jail kept your talent disciplined and quick.
The girl takes the /
umbrella or /
does the umbrella take /
the girl /
lead her out into the wet /
evening and /
touch her softly on the hand
