Two Poems

Keith Ekiss

History of Lightning

Windows shake, don’t shatter. Thunder
brings pleasure, a fracture, the lacquered
bowl of the night sky split. The downpour

batters gutters, drowns trees. Power
goes out, clouds electrical. My mother
lights candles, as if she will bow to pray.

Danger keeps a distance from our house.
We are never the unlucky ones—nothing
strikes and burns. I shy from open space

and water; it shines like braids of hair
worried into silver, ribboned and spinal.

***

Unfinished Houses

I photographed three boulders—
rather than my brothers or the family dog.

I snapped my shadow on cactus spines.
A series of close-ups: concrete bricks

divided our yard from a world
under construction—slugs and beams,

sawdust piles, stacks of copper pipe
and plastic tubing, sculpture disappeared

as the house went up. I ghosted the rooms,
spoke where no one heard. Whatever mice

nested beneath the floorboards left no
trace and slunk out past the suburbs.

Bulldozers still remind me of childhood—
creosote bush unearthed, reverse burial.

I knew the muddy tracks wouldn’t last.
Plywood and stucco weren’t permanent.

Keith Ekiss works as a Stage Coach Inspector in the 19th-century.
keith.ekiss@gmail.com

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