Philip Schaefer & Jeff Whitney
Perpetual Country (Unnatural History)
What’s left to say of the boys rolling like whales
in their second hand cigarette burned sweaters.
Like someone wasn’t satisfied with heaven
so scarred new constellations over the heart.
The tugboat on its hitch still dreams of distant waters
. The dolls with one eye won the war they never signed
up for. Green hair strewn across the lawn as if the gods
threw up cave moss. Isn’t this what we pay for? Falling
in love with whatever washes to shore, the cold cash deal
of needles between toes, the quiet hallway of ghosts
the eyes roll back through into grey brain matter.
Our hands form funeral doves that clap together
like twin rams for a child rounding third. He’s going
home after all, and home, in every story, is a mouth
with no throat, a match head’s red punctuation
on the black black page. Dear angel: my legs
took me here. I have never loved. In Canada
the snow gave me a face I could paint deciduous.
Eventually I drank the heart of a limping wolf.
Let me say it plain: night shovels eyes from the morning.
I have never heard a wind that wasn’t also a shadow.
I have never seen a bird that wasn’t simply gravity
dying. When a sea horse mates, it mates with the idea
of a future but what future is in a Christmas tree soaked
in gasoline? The shortest sentence in the bible
is the blank place between words. A beautiful
mouth with our names on its teeth. Heaven is a map
we don’t have but keep selling. Let’s throw
our bodies on this grass, carved up by dog teeth
and thin syringes until we are more pumpkin
than skin, more hollowed smile, something to light
up inside. Let it look like red tape over our lips.
Philip Schaefer’s first collection of poems Bad Summon won the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize from the University of Utah Press and will be released this summer. He is the author of three chapbooks, two of which were co-written with friend and poet Jeff Whitney. He won the 2016 Meridian Editor’s Prize in poetry and has individual work out or due out in Kenyon Review, THRUSH, Guernica, The Cincinnati Review, Birdfeast, Salt Hill, Bat City, Adroit, Baltimore Review, and Passages North among others. He tends bar in Missoula, MT.
Jeff Whitney is the author of five chapbooks, two of which were co-written with Philip Schaefer. His poems can be found or found soon in journals such as Adroit, Beloit Poetry Journal, Blackbird, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and Verse Daily. He lives in Portland.
Return to May 2017 Edition
What’s left to say of the boys rolling like whales
in their second hand cigarette burned sweaters.
Like someone wasn’t satisfied with heaven
so scarred new constellations over the heart.
The tugboat on its hitch still dreams of distant waters
. The dolls with one eye won the war they never signed
up for. Green hair strewn across the lawn as if the gods
threw up cave moss. Isn’t this what we pay for? Falling
in love with whatever washes to shore, the cold cash deal
of needles between toes, the quiet hallway of ghosts
the eyes roll back through into grey brain matter.
Our hands form funeral doves that clap together
like twin rams for a child rounding third. He’s going
home after all, and home, in every story, is a mouth
with no throat, a match head’s red punctuation
on the black black page. Dear angel: my legs
took me here. I have never loved. In Canada
the snow gave me a face I could paint deciduous.
Eventually I drank the heart of a limping wolf.
Let me say it plain: night shovels eyes from the morning.
I have never heard a wind that wasn’t also a shadow.
I have never seen a bird that wasn’t simply gravity
dying. When a sea horse mates, it mates with the idea
of a future but what future is in a Christmas tree soaked
in gasoline? The shortest sentence in the bible
is the blank place between words. A beautiful
mouth with our names on its teeth. Heaven is a map
we don’t have but keep selling. Let’s throw
our bodies on this grass, carved up by dog teeth
and thin syringes until we are more pumpkin
than skin, more hollowed smile, something to light
up inside. Let it look like red tape over our lips.
Philip Schaefer’s first collection of poems Bad Summon won the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize from the University of Utah Press and will be released this summer. He is the author of three chapbooks, two of which were co-written with friend and poet Jeff Whitney. He won the 2016 Meridian Editor’s Prize in poetry and has individual work out or due out in Kenyon Review, THRUSH, Guernica, The Cincinnati Review, Birdfeast, Salt Hill, Bat City, Adroit, Baltimore Review, and Passages North among others. He tends bar in Missoula, MT.
Jeff Whitney is the author of five chapbooks, two of which were co-written with Philip Schaefer. His poems can be found or found soon in journals such as Adroit, Beloit Poetry Journal, Blackbird, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and Verse Daily. He lives in Portland.
Return to May 2017 Edition