Thrush Poetry Journal
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Conor Bracken
​

AT THE C̶A̶N̶C̶E̶R̶  CENTER

Noon humid but freshened 
by drizzle. The hospital parking lot

that charges 5 an hour no matter how sick.
How close to death. How little space there is

between the periodic whimpers of this woman
I wheel through the soft halls of this place

that is built to undo what built it. Oedipal,
I know, to slay your progenitor or –trix

but I am tired of the Greeks,
their myths that don’t deliver to me
​
the particular shovel my people
buried sinners in the bogs with,

that hacked many holes in the earth 
for an olive grove that still yields its sour fruit.  

The haft, blade long ago snapped off, 
whittled to a cane for a shepherd 

stumping between scattered stands of loblolly

marauders felled and fitted into ships,
leaving these difficult fields to slalom

rainwater to the sea 
with half-hearted resistance.

Where is the path through this difficult field 
the water has not carried off?

                                                 The carpet―
heather green, maroon—mutes our motion

but the signs say we’re getting close. 
And though we can’t see it from this hallway

the sun has passed its apex, 
is heading downwards,

revolving past the clouds that someone
has loosely tacked below the horizon, 

horizon from the Greek 
for bound or bounded 

or maybe the Latin
for the curved part of a plow.




Conor Bracken's work has been nominated for the Best of the Net, and appears or is forthcoming in Handsome, the minnesota review, Ninth Letter, and Puerto del Sol, among others. Originally from Virginia, he lives in Texas, where he received his MFA from the University of Houston and was a poetry editor for Gulf Coast.





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