from Jesse James
Kevin Weidner
I feel him not far off, dear
the light’s unsettled
like a song
(even the moonlight is blinding)
the winds are changing
the winds pick the branches like steel strings
there the owl
there the crescendo of hooves
I feel him not far off
like the bringer of seasons
a blade of lightning for each body in the stand
the dark rider, the light falters like late fallen snow
as much as I want to hear you
I don’t, dear
I want a messiah
with sunflower eyes
a monarch in the throat
I feel him not far off
in the dogwood blooms
the dark center of petals
where the shadows pupil
when I look away from the sun
everything is absent light
the light falters
I feel him not far off
and what can I do now
think how many he’s sent to grave
early and unexpected
he’s not far off
and when he comes as a lone figure in the dark
or a lone man in the swelter
what can I do but go
as have so many
into the sucked-in center of his barrel
the singular gravity of what’s been pulling me
from Jesse James
Kevin Weidner
lately rooms are not to be entered
but backed into
my home no longer
a nest in the canopy
a cave where
the wounded go to die
commonly
it is said
a mother won’t return
if she smells a human touch
a white tail at the first
downwind scent
parting
the grasses to a secret
meeting of blackbirds
lately memory is a room
to be run from
in the clearing
an upward scatterstorm
Kevin Weidner hails from Missouri and currently lives in Tuscaloosa, where he is pursuing an MFA in creative writing at the University of Alabama. His work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, storySouth, Midwestern Gothic, PANK, and elsewhere. He edits the online journal 751 Magazine.
0 comments on “Poetry: Weidner”