THREE POEMS by Stacy Kidd

gray like black waters

oil isn’t gone here,
isn’t part

for parcel— (a tower)

a man lifts his feet
on water,

— can’t stomp

across, can’t call across
for the hearing.

how, when simple

gestures
bring snakegrass,

bring a vast

blueness and hoodoo,
he wants so much

to move exactly

this
way &

— no, no, no, no,

it’s not like something
imagined

in dull movies.

~~~~~~~~

cata

strophe : the gray lung,
the song—
a gray, gull

song¬— & strong in arms: a buoy.

antistrophe : black nights
dull
into black gray—

say oceans part or come

called apart, a
a man
in a dark salt suit—

he smoothes his moustache.

~~~~~~~~

only once

came with a sharp twitch

a hometown eyeing

doubts as if a circateer’s top

hat floating on top of water:

a carnivale: an anything

outside your nervous system.

~~~~~~~~

Stacy Kidd is completing a PhD in English at the University of Utah. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Columbia, Eleven Eleven, The Iowa Review, and WITNESS, among others. Her chapbooks About Birds and A man in a boat in the summer are forthcoming this year.   She is founder and editor of the new online journal intersection(s), which launches this fall and is found here: intersectionsjournal.org.