Justin Wymer
Not What’s Found but Where One Looks
Through these ticking grasses, through
mouths of beetles, mottling
the stob that holds the old farmhouse up, sifts crust
from the caul left round the calf spilled several
weeks early. A root vegetable, juiced. Then
hand-smell again.
Keep riding.
Come hard rain—erasure.
Come dusk, shadows thronging in bilious weeds
rock, alter themselves to fit in the tuck
of my passing sleeve, drenched; into the cave
of my throat; the honk inside swiftling light,
a preybird come morning. To think
the base of that sound is fed on
meat. On the far bank a smoky dog lopes closer,
jowling at me for a rind. He’s
ripping up the water like
a piece of tatty felt. Brief mist. The air smells
of stale-sweat hands. Is there
a fresher type of dream?
That the horsefly jostle from the nettles, a past tense red.
And the wood louse crawl from its damp sieve
to tongue, feed, sense salt, the ghost of salt
like the tang at the start of blood.
Lichen tightening on the bellies of stones
come bone-colored evening, come
a crow collecting stones, to fix
the mortar of his address. Roots knotting into
each other, sucking, unfastening other
stones, cattle teeth, jutting up.
None of this to say, filled. None to say
remove that ratty sweat-rag from your eyes.
A native of West Virginia, Justin Wymer holds degrees from Harvard University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His poems have appeared in Beecher's, Boston Review, Conjunctions, The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Lana Turner, Nat. Brut, Souvenir, THRUSH, and elsewhere. He lives in Iowa City.
Return to July 2015 Edition
Through these ticking grasses, through
mouths of beetles, mottling
the stob that holds the old farmhouse up, sifts crust
from the caul left round the calf spilled several
weeks early. A root vegetable, juiced. Then
hand-smell again.
Keep riding.
Come hard rain—erasure.
Come dusk, shadows thronging in bilious weeds
rock, alter themselves to fit in the tuck
of my passing sleeve, drenched; into the cave
of my throat; the honk inside swiftling light,
a preybird come morning. To think
the base of that sound is fed on
meat. On the far bank a smoky dog lopes closer,
jowling at me for a rind. He’s
ripping up the water like
a piece of tatty felt. Brief mist. The air smells
of stale-sweat hands. Is there
a fresher type of dream?
That the horsefly jostle from the nettles, a past tense red.
And the wood louse crawl from its damp sieve
to tongue, feed, sense salt, the ghost of salt
like the tang at the start of blood.
Lichen tightening on the bellies of stones
come bone-colored evening, come
a crow collecting stones, to fix
the mortar of his address. Roots knotting into
each other, sucking, unfastening other
stones, cattle teeth, jutting up.
None of this to say, filled. None to say
remove that ratty sweat-rag from your eyes.
A native of West Virginia, Justin Wymer holds degrees from Harvard University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His poems have appeared in Beecher's, Boston Review, Conjunctions, The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Lana Turner, Nat. Brut, Souvenir, THRUSH, and elsewhere. He lives in Iowa City.
Return to July 2015 Edition