What Am I To Say No?
MACKIE GARRETT
to the afternoon
I asked for, now that
every shadow's long
& even the railyard's
gone quiet again?
There are those who climb
the outer hills shouldering
a rough cross they bolted in place
from a kit great grandmother
left in the attic, my name
on it -- what am I
to say no to the old
cult of fat & sugar?
Maybe that's the one
pleasure left late,
bits down my throat,
through guts & swimming
the blood’s flight around
my over-known veins, what
am I to say no
to what I want most, this
old hope that I'll know it
when, at last,
it comes around
I asked for, now that
every shadow's long
& even the railyard's
gone quiet again?
There are those who climb
the outer hills shouldering
a rough cross they bolted in place
from a kit great grandmother
left in the attic, my name
on it -- what am I
to say no to the old
cult of fat & sugar?
Maybe that's the one
pleasure left late,
bits down my throat,
through guts & swimming
the blood’s flight around
my over-known veins, what
am I to say no
to what I want most, this
old hope that I'll know it
when, at last,
it comes around
With a Low & Steady Eye
MACKIE GARRETT
Let’s seek out
what's damp & leaf-hidden
Tell me, again, how
mayapples bloom
every seven --
or was it 14 years?
Another time around
the lopsided circle
& we run out
of polite chatter
Another stray worth keeping,
day-old kittens
dropped in a box
A garter snake
too chilled to move
That box-turtle your sister
kept in a glass-house,
fed on crickets & honey-dew -- she tried
to let him go but he came
slowly home again
One wet corner
of a torn-up note,
the slash & loop
of long-held words,
the way ink
runs in the rain
what's damp & leaf-hidden
Tell me, again, how
mayapples bloom
every seven --
or was it 14 years?
Another time around
the lopsided circle
& we run out
of polite chatter
Another stray worth keeping,
day-old kittens
dropped in a box
A garter snake
too chilled to move
That box-turtle your sister
kept in a glass-house,
fed on crickets & honey-dew -- she tried
to let him go but he came
slowly home again
One wet corner
of a torn-up note,
the slash & loop
of long-held words,
the way ink
runs in the rain
Mackie Garrett's poems have appeared in Iodine Poetry Journal, Big Muddy, Blue Collar Review, The Fourth River, Plainsongs and Bombus Press. In addition to reading and writing, he enjoys playing music, taking photographs, and printing poetry broadsides and making books at the Iowa City Press Cooperative, where he is editor and founder of 508 Press.