What Rough Beast | 08 28 20 | Peggy Dobreer

Peggy Dobreer
Untrust With Songbirds

My room cartons in cardboard, string-sealed boxes
Death so close you could throw a stone home
 
            A stone like death that throws its song home
            My stance trembles with brown thrasher songs
 
Brown thrashers tremble in their wilderness of song
I turn trail and run from a faint field of sky 
 
            I am this faint field of sky and won’t turn or run
            I am a citadel of ghost prayer, a cranial prison
 
A cranial prison is a citadel of prayers and ghosts
I hear only one true sound—like a baby—laughing
 
            A baby laughing strikes one note only                
            Like lovers gasping to find their own salvation
 
I grasp at my lover to trust our found salvation
My room cartons in cardboard, string-sealed boxes

—Submitted on 08/24/2020

Peggy Dobreer is the author of Drop and Dazzle (Moon Tide Press, 2018) and In The Lake of Your Bones (Moon Tide Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Press, Rise Up Review, Cultural Weekly, Poetic Diversity, The Juice Bar, and other journals. She lives in Southern California. 

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