At dusk the west
broke,
a seam of blood,
a vow the lost
and never-
found, those stuffed
in the roots of the gallows-
tree,
would not cease,
would sleep in the deep
of a red
lake in air.
Something unwound
in us
like kinks in a torqued
rope
cut. We fluttered—
the west shut.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 17, Issue 4.
Ben Debus is pursuing a PhD in medieval literature at Indiana University, where he was awarded an MFA in poetry in 2008. His poems have appeared most recently in Fairy Tale Review, Lumina, and The Cincinnati Review. He lives in Bloomington, IN with his wife, poet Cate Whetzel, and their son.
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