Poetry by Melissa Tuckey
Lament
On the Anniversary of King’s Assassination
A tree frog emaciated on road
and we ourselves, so easily lost
walking together at sunrise
One crow preens other’s head
The gravel road, a rosy tint
The field almost lit
Drought pecking our land
For days, we have mourned lost geese
I carry water
Chalk a list of things to do:
Water what is green
Abandon what is too much to carry
Morning sun baring its shiny white teeth
Walking the woods, I became dizzy
trying to learn the names of trees, looking up at not
one steady thing
as if the whole sky could come undone
Hours later an enormous hickory
is flung hard across the length
of our lawn, crown shattered
Just earlier that day, my neighbor
said we should do something about the tree
Heavy winds blowing through America
dangerous storms
No one can say we didn’t see it coming
Yael tells me hickory is medicine
for helplessness
Dave says, okay, but—
The tree fell
The Day After
This oil has a mouth
The clownish hair, his petulant scowl and bulldog face
That Halloween mask
Go ahead, remove the mask, show us who
or what is inside, & I’m thinking
what we least expect, of course
Hillary Clinton
Because isn’t that what we want?
For what we see with out own eyes to NOT be real
and for what is real to jump from behind
the living room
couch
yelling “Surprise!”
&
we all go back to our beds dreaming
our lives are once again possible
All the while the television newscasters snicker with delight
clapping their rodent hands yelling
“encore!”
Which is of course the absolutely worse
thing to yell
when you finally wake up from a nightmare
and you realize
you never were awake at all—
filled with crude the oil has read
our founding documents the oil has rights
it burns beside waters still sweet enough
for our lips