Two Poems
Joel Fry Getting Comfortable I sleep between my feet and my hands, ensconced in money. My gold sheets down to my toes cover the heat of summers past where everyone begs for me to dance again between the shadows of fence posts. All the trees growing on my land give fruit. The best rain from the best season falls each month. I waste my wealth on strangers in the city, dry mouths from parched tenants, fat men fallen on lean times in the tournament of feelings. Living alone brings me motionless to windless nights when the moon tucks uncovered behind the barn and the best light reaches the earth in scrabble. Acquaintances discover me in small spaces, in rooms that can barely hold song. The story I tell is self-defense. I understand the stars better than a friend’s breath, better than the anxiety that covers everything with suspense unspeakable. Nothing makes this easy. Everywhere I go something is aware of my presence. I cannot buy an open grave to fall into. The Struggle The day-to-day struggle keeps us enormous, our wild hair matted with trash, wool from the world over, our flesh stretched taut across a drum. We digest the rudiments of this disaster when we look down at housetops and eat whatever worries us. How else can two people stay fat together? Children scrimmage around our feet. The vestibules of light illuminate our giant faces when you tickle my chin with a tree. Your hand in mine is all I can think about these days. Your swaying body is the base line of each song that comes to mind and will come to mind after you’re gone—your freckled skin the only music I remember. Flowers bloom in this rummaging. Things change, but the process by which they change remains the same. None of this can stop a river from damming in my ears. My plight is happiness. A sour tongue blights all my food. I cannot name the refulgence we face together, the fog we enter alone. We are joy redoubled and contracted. Nothing without us can appear. |
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About the Author:
Joel Fry lives in Athens, Alabama and has had poems published in Off the Coast, Eclectica, Asheville Poetry Review, Ghost Town, The Florida Review and many other places. Many of his poems may be read in the back issues of the online journal, Eclectica.
Joel Fry lives in Athens, Alabama and has had poems published in Off the Coast, Eclectica, Asheville Poetry Review, Ghost Town, The Florida Review and many other places. Many of his poems may be read in the back issues of the online journal, Eclectica.