Poem in Progress: ‘cold spring song’

A peek at a draft of a new poem I’ve been working at. Enjoy.

 

COLD SPRING SONG

 

a fist, made and then un-made.          your

jeans pocket, worked, like some barely

recollected friday night, its empty cases and

mis-steps; its dark seaming, formlessness.         

and that knuckle you fractured years back?

it’s now a bone-forked tine just struck, now

tuning this unseasonably jarring april day, its

chill sleet music, with each exposure to the

gelid air.          your re-knit joint first ringing

slip-shrill as a new-shattered icicle against

some nerve’s tin roof; an ice staccatoed

treble splintering.        then, simply: nothing.

then, ache. deep thrumming, a slushed-

marrow pang pulsing the base edge of your

hand; the face of a roughly cobbled stone

wall struck, over and over again.          again

a fist, made and then un-made.