Sample Poems by Steven Sherrill
Latter-Day Sonnet
In abject black, the crow, betrothed to up
bound to down, beats itself senseless against
the day — the night — O flea infested dupe
I envy you, your guttural pittance
Know this, the pine repudiates its root
The breastbone, excerpted, a fine tableau
To yearn — (infinitive) bridge between two —
us, un-conjugated. Out of the blue
out of the blue blue sky, dribbling pity
for the apple — its dubious drop. Hear —
the crow all ink black in its piety
is no less than a primer. However
unknowable you, I remain devout
and gift this, with true pause, to you — my doubt
The Idiot’s Theorem
Rules of thumb or Rule of Thumbs,
I’m not sure which to live by
And all day long you yak yak yak
Your tired politics fill my empty pockets
No justice— you say, no this no that no…
I say you’re wrong. I say
You need to come to the water. Come
Come in July, come at two maybe three o’clock
When the cataract sun makes cadence
Across the hard slab of a summer afternoon
And the still green pond offers up its carp
Lifts them from murky slumber
They hover beneath the surface like fat
orange dirigibles Conspire in gape-mouthed silence
(The full balance of daylight hangs in their scales)
Before, and finally, sinking out of sight
All the gold in the world clutched in their greedy fins
Gripe all you want. Come to the water and you’ll know
Beauty prevails on its own terms
Lexicon for Locke Mountain
Up. Down. What more do you need?
Those cockamamie stovepipes huff and puff
We’re all at the mercy of December
I love her. This handful of tent worms proves it
Once I walked all the way…
And who are you to argue with the box turtle’s
torpid discourse
Stop to rest and rot— a heartless parliamentarian
— saddles you. What I wouldn’t give
for a romp in the hay. Look
At the birch tree’s crooked adulation and tell me
there is no good God. Typo. It’s snowing. I’m on my knees
I’m begging for eternal life on my own terms
Guess what happens
Preamble to the Treatise on Desire
Take for example the junco
having hurled itself against
my dining room window twice
now in half a dozen years
and thousands of miles between.
Stupid window, stupid glass.
You may never reckon with
these impenetrable plates
through which I define my world
but I’ve concocted the need.
Bird delineates its day
with bush, fence line, branch and stone.
How obvious my thick snout
my muddy hooves must appear.
Of your penciled nights’ endless
black acres, I know little. Nothing
of cowering in the cedar’s needled refuge.
Only the incessant
Winging— your furtive beauty
through the barren canvas of
my ecumenical diptych.
Only the cold hard huddling
huddling, as if in prayer
to wait wait wait out
the solstice of your own quick heart.
Koi Pond in Winter: Field Notes
Beneath December ice
the red carp
lie in torpid discourse
with…what—
Beneath December ice
red axe-heads sleep
in scaled impatience
Pay attention
do re mi fa so la ti do: sleep
o’ murderous pitch
Justice wears a black boot
My love— the other
the Truth sometimes hangs
in our gills
Beneath December ice Red
hacks the other colors to death. Above
measured sky tolls and tolls
Spring thaw may or may not redeem us