by Robert McDonald
might come from the sea in the form of a wave that is really
a mountain, or the wind
might become a giant’s hand, tearing out a forest
and a town by the roots.
Or you can open a day like today: the first poplar leaves
gone yellow; our train stays
on its track (no madman with a bomb) and the sea, the sky,
the placid earth, nothing flexes
or shrugs its gargantuan shoulders. Sparrows in the weedtops:
today’s only swift
and uncaring movement.
Robert McDonald is a queer poet living in Chicago, where he works at an independent bookstore. His work has appeared in PANK, Columbia Poetry Review, Sentence, Gertrude, Cloudbank, and Jabberwock Review, among many others.
Emerge Literary Journal 