Thrush Poetry Journal
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Steve Mueske

To All the Frogs

who sleep in the mud, 
who cling to the trees and sing me 
to sleep each night: I confess 
a love for your instrument. 
Your throats fill like instant bellows
with enough air for those 
profundo lows: quick clench 
of muscle that needs 
the whole body, the Baby,-
I'm-Your-Man muscle, the muscle
that coils all the way down 
to your toes. Then gone: 
a belching horn blast of a note 
that blows across the pond. 
I love to listen to your ethereal choir –
your basses and altos, tenors 
and sopranos – through my window 
after making love, when you sing 
of all the world's loneliness, 
and I lie sweaty on the sheets, 
nerves jangling like a hotwired Yes.
“I love that sound,” my wife says, 
her voice dreamy and slow; 
I listen to the flavor of the dark, 
its mosses, its mud and still water –
the insects, the leaves breathing –
as my body cools, and I feel
the drowsy tendrils of sleep
bring me down easy, so easy.




Steve Mueske is an electronic musician and the author of a chapbook and two books of poetry, most recently Slower Than Stars. His poems have been published in The Massachusetts Review, Crazyhorse, Crab Orchard Review, Third Coast, Court Green, Hotel Amerika, CURA, Waster~Stone Review, and anthologies such as Best New Poets.  His music is downloadable at stevemueske.bandcamp.com/. He can be reached on Facebook or Twitter @SteveMueske




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