[Poetry | Issue 11]
Gabriel Welsch
Two poems
Why We Worry
We know, now—
nothing
the unseen can willow
water a building wind
whips to a copter-whisk
wayward and vicious
Hunch where little grows
in the dismal, the dour
mold moving in multiples
Homes have a hide—so many
trees and limbs a shady thatch
that lisps the omen
—what we don’t see
the threat we imagine—
the possible not a comfort,
the impossible crouching
in too favorable odds
when the wind goes
funnel
funnel funnel
funnel
funnel
rip—
Why We Prefer Not To Trust the Ground
The ice catches my wheel
when I park in the private lot
where I chase the person
I think I could be
once a week.
The ground messes
with my head as do the windows
in old houses,
glass thicker
at the base of the pane.
The tire wobbles
making earth uncertain
and my breath pause
before catching again
to stop the car.
What scam is solidity.
Ice and its unyielding slip,
dirt holding the water
and air necessary
for the thrust of a turgid stalk.
Two birds rest in mute
telepathy on one side of a cross
at the apex of the oldest
church still upright and
poking at a low-slung heaven.
Consider the self so thin
our atomic fiber
lets through energy
as we stride so sure—
electrical sieves.
In the town where my feet
slip on the ground
I do not know there is
a wish to dig and strike a root
where it cannot be seen.
Gabriel Welsch is the author of a collection of short stories, Groundscratchers, and four collections of poems, the latest of which is The Four Horsepersons of a Disappointing Apocalypse. He once lived right next to the Black Fork River (the one in West Virginia) and now lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and works at Duquesne University.