Robert McDonald
I Think Too Much About the Mountain Ash
My flame, my need,
my autumn weeping,
an old man
locked
in a suitcase of bark.
You, my hoard
of golden coins.
Lord
of quaking,
groveless
loner, let foothills
rejoice, let your
leaves
flee your arms
to ignite the ground.
Everything always
and sometimes burning.
my autumn weeping,
an old man
locked
in a suitcase of bark.
You, my hoard
of golden coins.
Lord
of quaking,
groveless
loner, let foothills
rejoice, let your
leaves
flee your arms
to ignite the ground.
Everything always
and sometimes burning.
Froth
Tip of the waves, end of the shore, bubble
from the burrow of a Carolina
ghost crab, oh breath of salt, oh fishy
exclamation, oh egg-whites peaking
the way the old recipe said they would, I shall
stir the sea with a branch I found
at the high water mark, the white one
my children tell me looks
like a bone.
from the burrow of a Carolina
ghost crab, oh breath of salt, oh fishy
exclamation, oh egg-whites peaking
the way the old recipe said they would, I shall
stir the sea with a branch I found
at the high water mark, the white one
my children tell me looks
like a bone.
Robert McDonald lives in Chicago and works at an indie bookstore. His work has appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Elsewhere, Sentence, Court Green, PANK, Atticus, and The Literary Bohemian, among others.