TWO POEMS BY DERECK CLEMONS


          And She in Her Living Crept Out


          And yes I am visiting you now even
          though you’re a lady and such. You’d like to stick here
          but your good body of light likes to wander
          and you didn’t know it. Or notice the stardust
          draining from your hair but I see this
          and say I’m not outside a body.                        I am very much inside
          this thing of light. The ear hurts.
          Good times,
          those, she tells me.
          The field behind the lab is hazy
          and the air is still.
          It is hard to breathe in the morning so I
          press my hand into my back
          and sit up straight and air rushes in.
          Dust rushes with it
          carrying spirits tethered to tiny corpses.
          We sit on the fire escape and shoot the shit before
          getting back in. What am I still doing
          here she says.
          She swears to God. She’s got to get along. How
          she gets at eighty to be so
          restless I need to know. She says humans
          unearthed in their brains
          a chasm and the wind whipped in whistling through the walls.
          She explains it’s like what else. She waves
          her cigarette in front of her face. Like I exercise
          and eat right. I don’t know if that’s a secret.
          She stands up and smooths
          her skirt. She touches the door handle
          and turns to me.
          A breeze lifts her blouse a little.
          She says you ought to do something
          about your breath.
          I know I say.
          Because it’s rancid.
          I know.
          Like ass.


          Impit


          wakes at dawn with hair out its ears, twigs out its armpits,
          runs to the bathroom and shaves its legs,

          a doctor parts the thin, translucent curtain of his office window,
          rests his head on his desk,
          the tulips in the vase, he wants to feed them sunlight,

          the doctor thinks on the patient on his couch, deprived of sleep he collapsed there,
          blips of sound rose, parted his lips, the doctor pulled a blanket over him,
          put a pillow beneath his head,

          the patient’s downcast eyes rose to meet his,
          the effect, he don’t mind if the wrong of him moves,

          he reaches out and touches his computer monitor, picks off a thread of dust,

          in the waiting room, on the muted television over the Impit’s head, a weather map
          is up with forecast highs and lows, a person walks onscreen addressing the numbers,
          the Impit points as if to say it would like to own its own television,

          the doctor pulls at his earlobe, expands the canal,
          air rushes past and sound waves into him, air conditioning, fluorescent lighting,
          the office distorts open,

          he puts the patient’s file on the floor, rubs his fingers into his brow,
          the skin stretches, instead of shoes and the wheels of the chair,
          he sees blurred knobs, the mind bubbles,

          places his fork on a dish in the sink      hungry?    it’s like regressing, or not regressing,
           but retracing    how you got to be here    hungry?     it’s true     I haven’t eaten      I’m
           material      I’m sorry      exhausted      don’t say it’s true, just listen      I’m glad you picked
           me up      there were contagious people there      I haven’t eaten      [opens a cabinet]      we
           have popcorn, potatoes      a gas station off the interstate      the only car at the pumps
           is pulling out      the overpass vibrates, warbles      semis pass      gasoline      the sun
           separates from the horizon     traffic

          he comes to the river, in the weeds Danny stood and between choking on water,
          laughed, and the doctor didn’t know what came over him, he picked up a rock
          and threw it at Danny,

          the Impit contains a cough, hobbles to the lobby for a coffee and croissant,
          who knows if the food will reach its stomach, it’s starting to think more often,
          who knows, would like to see a doctor,



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Dereck Clemons lives in Davis, California and is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His Wormhole poems appear in BlazeVOX.


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