Because the car drives too fast into nothing
but horizon and other cars
look like flowers out of focus, broken alive
in fields. Because you can’t believe
how a bed oscillates between comfort
and suffocation by sheets. Because
flowers replace gravesites like candles replace
light the body needs. Because smells
live deeper than touch. Because water washes
even determined insects from petals
and people, and people pull out their desires
come the springtime, because people
can never bloom enough to make the world
more than machine, even if they want
blood. Because the threat is often more a smell
and then a pinching inside the body.
Because the cry you hear is a child standing
on a flowerbed tended
by his dying mother.
Because all things die by candlelight or stem.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 22, Issue 1.
After living in Alaska and California, Bret Shepard completed his PhD at the University of Nebraska. Currently, he lives in Tacoma, Washington and teaches at Green River College. He is the author of Negative Compass, winner of the Wells College Chapbook Prize.
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