"Lover & the Wild Rise" and "Poem After the Pilot's Gone Missing"

Lover & the Wild Rise 

it’s hopeless
dear

                      time & heart &
                      wrong & fall &
                      nets &

world & will &
mother & decay
& work

                      & slander & god
                      & flight & hollow

& always & come
come loneliness

                    —

flood you among it
voices shine for days

                      time’s bitter rise all
                      eyes but these lost

                    —

what to you is a heart
to me is a little room

                      a safe warm shadow
                      gloom brimmed up
                      pray for a storm

hide bitter blossom
mixed in breath

                    —

dead in a
strange place I
planted two bits

                      of wood & left her
                      boards over her face

                    —

a hound that follows
day and night hope &

                      desire & fear under his
                      feet I root out the sun

lie in darkness grunt
turn long for the end

                    —

I stand amid sighs
lay down my head

                      dim clouded lids
                      lovers pass 2x2

a stealthy wither
pale valley no cry

                    —

trees grow from
black turn to bare

                      sniff the wind sure
                      of change colors of

its fruit us subtle roots
plant quiet shakes in

                      the night make lips
                      murmur for a day

a circle a raven
unrest thought

                      ragged wings
                      tender claw

hunger all
things made

                      holy in god’s
                      unkind sleep

                    —

I hear horses
in your end
less dreams

                      their legs
                      hide in your

half closed
eyes hooves

                      plunge deep
                      in clay

in your breast
the hour of

                      drowning
                      unfolds

                    —

 

Poem After the Pilot's Gone Missing 

maybe we’re still climbing
flash at the end of a cloud
cigarette light parakeet shine
no stops or ends

rise sun flutter in all directions
moths rain mere cells
brushed against a wall
say I am weightless

Emily J. Cousins lives, teaches, and writes in Denver, CO. Her poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, The Offbeat, Another Chicago Magazine, Bombay Gin, The Maine Review, The Collapsar, and elsewhere.