2 POEMS by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back

A CHORUS OF SEVERED PIPES


When I was a kid, I threw a stone into the moon's reflection
and saw it break into a thousand sharp pieces.

It was dark, and the world sang to itself
to keep from being frightened.
Wheat stalks sighed under the thresher's blades,
a chorus of severed pipes.
The crickets and the frogs kept time with one another;
I wrapped my arms around nothing
and waltzed circles through the corn rows
adrift in the harvest's beaconless sea.

I kept all the pieces I found
in a sack in the barn
where the pigeons battered, frantic in my chest.

Sunrise flicked its laughing tongue
through the interstices between gap-toothed rafters
and I knew that I could never make it whole again;
all those taarnish-bright shards
carried away in the silt of stream beds
winking at nothing
from the thatch of magpies' nests.

That's why there are still dark patches on the moon.
That's why the animals still call out to each other in the dark,

bullfrogs' throats stretch fat like pearls
while the crickets rub their thighs and sing.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~


BIRCH

When you left I found a book on the shelf
full of drawings of birds.
I cut them out with my scissors
thinking I would make you a halo
if I could teach them to circle your forehead.
I closed my eyelids with masking tape
and walked with my arms stretched out
into the wind-snapped firs
and the white trunks of birches,
convinced that I could find you if you thought I wasn't looking
still sitting cross-legged somewhere
catching moths with the flame of your butane lighter.


Kelly Rose Pflug-Back

from THESE BURNING STREETS, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, 2012
ISBN -13: 978-1-938660-00-9; $8

www.TANGLEDWILDERNESS.ORG
strangers@riseup.net

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Ursula Pflug has left a new comment on your post "launching new People's Poet: Kelly Rose Pflug-Back...":

Chris, we really appreciate the outpouring of support we have received in so many forms: PR and cover blurbs for the book, including yours!--letters of support for the court, donations, food, Catalina's beautiful venue, and love. Incidentally, I know RD Roy's work because Pam Brown and I published him when we edited Takeout, a print publication for The Cooked and Eaten, the now defunct Peterborough reading series. Love his work.




Posted by Ursula Pflug to Riffs & Ripples from ZenRiver Gardens at 2 October 2012 13:12

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At 08:10 PM 01/10/2012, you wrote:
Thanks, Chris! Will repost hither and yon.
Strange how reading them in a different venue (your blog) made me see things in them I hadn`t seen before! Not surprising really as they are that dense and rich.
Enjoyed your story about doing acid at Glastonbury Tor btw.
-Ursula


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