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Two Poems
by John Leonard Life Boats for Paper Dolls I still throw salt over my shoulder because it makes the devil thirsty. He drinks from an oaken bucket. We can live our lives without him. * I know an old tree in Pennsylvania. A girl nobody saw leaned against its moss every day after class. She wrote in a journal while ants crawled between her silent fingers. The summer I turned eighteen, she tried to hang herself from it-- the tree, not the journal. It’s easy to get confused since our words often feel like gallows. * You never forget the first time you taste sour milk; that feeling of time's betrayal. But some things still have to be taken on faith and not on expiration dates. * Today, I spotted that girl at a book- store in Duluth, Minnesota. There is something beautiful about rotting wood. Divide the Days A grain of sand…or whatever grabs your attention. August started with a gunshot, and bled into my grand- father’s birthday. On this day in history, I stopped sending a Guatemalan child twenty dollars every month, because it was cutting into my beer fund. * The Son of Sam found Jesus. I’m still looking for my keys. Divide the days between cloud watching and watering a peace-lily that will almost certainly die. In my father’s house there were many rooms, but only one gun cabinet. Another piece of glass enters my foot from a ballerina figurine that was broken seven years ago. My whole point being-- there’s always a little something left behind. Joseph knew the same people I did. That’s why he fell across the seminary gates and crawled through thorn bushes. That’s why he swam trough all those brackish rivers. It doesn’t have to make sense to feel it; blood rising in an hour glass while my arms erase the moon. Nobody is God enough for you! Beseech me or leave a note on the fridge. Either way, I need to be reminded to buy milk and gather a handful of tomorrows. . |
John Leonard is a professor of composition and assistant editor of Twyckenham Notes, a poetry journal based out of South Bend, Indiana. His previous works have appeared in Poetry Quarterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, Fearsome Critters: A Millennial Arts Journal, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Burningword Literary Journal.
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