Three Poems
Bret Shepard THE HAWK The alp at the end of the street cleaves my thoughts in solitude. Address after address piles up in window shades of February near a concrete river bank, where two kingfishers mate violently, and then abandon the desire. Watching, I know we are more than numbers, the necessary ways we quiet into nothing at all, and then never more absent our sounds. The street stretches us beyond the comfort of new asphalt, where closer to the alp a hawk on the ground, half a squirrel in its throat, choked to death. A COMPASS Placed, so, beyond the compass of change, —Wallace Stevens The sinkhole at the edge of the wheat field, deepening, a magnet in its center-- it is common to mistake types of birds, or grasses. I once mistook the trees for desire. Then, the other day I could not remember the name of my mother’s cancer. MAGNETIC SENSE Sun affixed upon a field-bed, you lie on a sheet in the middle of a hay field spread out and damp from the dew. You keep your focus on the trouble with the spaces between what matters. A compass—our cells do experience magnetic stimulation—where is that field—yet the body is never enough. |
|

About the Author: After living in Alaska and California, Bret Shepard completed his PhD at the University of Nebraska. Currently, he lives in Tacoma, Washington and teaches at Green River College. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. He is the author of Negative Compass, winner of the Wells College Chapbook Prize.