Nicole Callihan

smoke


the old man’s knee was a horse and the horse
was named smoke and the old man’s sweater
was made of smoke and his fingers and his face   
and if you breathe just right you’re smoke too   
the horses got so hungry they started eating 
the trees but the trees had no more fruit 
than the bowls that were earthen empty
and blue a sky tipped up on its hind-legs
bucking and mad mustang moon back room 
if you dig deep enough into the ashtray 
you might find something worth smoking


~


pellet


among the things we shot off the barbed wire fence
an old plastic doll head a couple of tins of peas
about a hundred sundrop bottles their labels
melted off by storm and toil malachi pointed
the gun to the sky with one hand the other
he put down my pants i sucked on his earlobes
and fingers like this i asked he steadied
my arm you gotta keep your eye above the target
staring straight will choke you we’d shoot and pet
until dusk i love you i said you wouldn’t know love 
if it bit you in the ass  he said we swatted skeeters
and waited for somebody anybody to call us home

~



where


out past boone start taking rights
right at the crook right at the hairpin
right by the old dead dog in the bend
right when you see the cross right when 
the flowers bloom right when they stop 
blooming right when your heart becomes 
something other right to the left of the soul
right when you get brave enough to say
soul right when you stop right here
right sided right minded right winged
right footed right dreamed right there

~



weeds


kudzu kills everything but itself
crawls up into the space of the green
up your thighs into your throat
out back a billy goat on a rope
jug of milk small shame wild forsythia
pushes through i wonder the river
pounds the rocks pound the sky
pounds the hot nickel sun pounds
the old man’s hands pound me
come august i swim anyway
if only through the thick wild weeds 

~


Nicole Callihan's books include Henry River Mill Village (Arcadia Press 2012), SuperLoop (Sock Monkey Press 2014), A Study in Spring (Rabbit Catastrophe 2015), The Deeply Flawed Human (Deadly Chaps 2016), and Downtown (Finishing Line Press 2017). Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Plume, and as a Poem-a-Day Selection from the Academy of American Poets


~


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