John Skoyles
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John Skoyles is the author of four books of poems, A Little Faith; Permanent Change; Definition of the Soul and The Situation. He has also published a book of personal essays, Generous Strangers, and a memoir, Secret Frequencies: A New York Education. He has been awarded two individual fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as grants from the New York State and North Carolina Arts Councils. He teaches at Emerson College and currently serves as the poetry editor of Ploughshares.
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THOU SAYEST
With winter came surprising deaths
and the predictable obituaries
of those closer to stone
than to breath.
The deepest snow does not ask the plow,
thou sayest.
Rope saved to hang himself,
a pack of leggy cards --
these secrets broke
from my neighbor's chest of drawers
when he dropped
between a shovel and a pail of salt.
We watch them die until we die, thou sayest.
Parallel rows in the snow
from the unlifted feet of the old,
craters in the script of their signatures...
We only live so long with those we love,
thou sayest.
I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts,
my mother chirps at the bars of a keet cage,
Roll-a, bowl-a, ball-a-penny-a-pitch,
my father replies from his spot in the shade.
A bleached nurse praises
their joyful way
of counting back from a hundred.
They're yours until you think they're mine,
thou sayest.
========================================================
FISHING
I put down the phone and decide
to go fishing,
tired of the noise in my hand.
The rod is ready. Line spins
toward the charging sky
and into the pockmarked sea.
The silver lure thinks everyone has a price.
The fish say the price today is too high.
The sun remains neutral.
Its fight is with the earth
over who will last longer.
I cast and cast into the celestial drink
while the voice of the beyond
speaks through the tide.
I remain on shore
but divide from the man
wiping the sun from his skin
with a heartsick flag.
One side of the brain
hears sadness
in the tingling buoys.
The other says: don’t project.
I stand back
and perform that cruel gymnastic
for the soul:
I take a good look at myself.
And I begin to laugh
until I am whole again,
until I know it’s not funny.
===============================================
THE WISH MIND
Eternity might very well
be the longed for kiss
you wish would stop,
or the brazen ambition
to live with god,
now folded in the churchyard
with the horse chestnuts.
Eternity could simply
be the thirty shots of radiation
that took you thirty times
until the ending didn't finish,
nor the beginning start.
A girl pats her forehead
with a powder puff,
as if dotting the letter i.
She becomes an x, you change
to o, and the infinite game
ends always in a tie.
Eternity might take the shape
of a werewolf in the wish mind.
The librarian bends over
to look up a skirt.
The howl is strong
and we hear it forever.
Or maybe it's the dominating
see-saw in the center
of the playground,
whose rusty fulcrum squeals
to the children:
Life is long, William.
Life is short, Kate.
