Two Poems

Cutter P. Streeby

Negative: California

Here, the exposed wrist of the earth.
Here we fill our eyes with silt and pray for rain, day after day.

Under the same ceiling of sky:
the wind pushes a small twig into a brook, light
filters to the loam and a quiet squirrel imagines himself
King of the Mirage—

there is only            dappled light             between these leaves

where the tensile strength of stamps binds books;

light haloes around the silhouette of a woman's head, the television
plays a Western in black and white and without sound—
our silent promise—
where the chair creaks a little as we lean forward
waiting.

***

Night Poem

I try to make poems into armies,

but most times the words just wander into the street,
or bring back stick figure drawings with suns in the right spot.

I have to apologize for them most often at night
when the single sheet isn't enough

to keep the heat away, and their stretched necks press
against the windows. Naked branches knocking,

tongues from the ceiling's shadows. Not like birds
at all really, like slack-jaw smiles

from back-alley pipers who have been in the business
too long and scratch the windows, begging.

In my apartment complex, slamming doors sentence
palm readers tried in absentia

who promise sweaty truths from all the rooms
"just down the hall."

When the moon sets, a corridor ending in a red door opens.

Its golden knocker is a cherub's face behind blinds
who looks surprised to see me.

I ask him where he's been,
but of course he's speechless in the sunlight,
and I am answered by the hum of a summer fly;

by a morning wind that ruffles pages
and the bloated belly of a book.

Cutter Streeby is a graduate of the University of California, Riverside. He holds an MA from King's College, London where he studied literature. He is currently enrolled in the University of East Anglia where he is reading for an MA in poetry. He has works forthcoming from UCSB: Word!, Tengen: London, Columbia Review, and Sugarhouse Review.

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