Poem in the Early Morning

The Sudden Light and the Trees

My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog

and wife beater.

In bad dreams I killed him

and once, in the consequential light of day,

I called the Humane Society

about Blue, his dog.

They took her away

and I readied myself, a baseball bat

inside my door.

That night I hear his wife scream

and I couldn't help it, that pathetic

relief; her again, not me.

It would be years before I'd understand

why victims cling and forgive.

I plugged in

the Sleep-Sound and it crashed

like the ocean all the way to sleep.

One afternoon I found him

on the stoop,

a pistol in his hand, waiting,

he said, for me.

A sparrow had gotten in

to our common basement.

Could he have permission

to shoot it? The bullets, he explained,

might go through the floor.

I said I'd catch it, wait, give me

a few minutes and, clear-eyed, brilliantly

afraid, I trapped it

with a pillow.

I remember how it felt

when I got my hand, and how it burst

that hand open

when I took it outside, a strength

that must have come out of hopelessness

and the sudden light

and the trees.

And I remember

the way he slapped the gun against

his open palm,

kept slapping it, and wouldn't speak. 



*
Poem by Stephen Dunn
Photographer Pero Crepulja

Corners

Corners

I've sought out corner bars, lived in corner houses;
like everyone else I've reserved
corner tables, thinking they'd be sufficient.
I've met at corners
perceived as crossroads, loved to find love
leaning against a lamp post
but have known the abruptness of corners too,
the pivot, the silence.
I've sat in corners at parties hoping for someone
who knew the virtue
of both distance and close quarters, someone with a
corner person's taste
for intimacy, hard won, rising out of shyness 
and desire.
I've turned corners there was no going back to,
corners
in the middle of a room that lead
to Spain or solitude.
And always the thin line between corner
and cornered,
the good corners of bodies and those severe bodies
that permit no repose,
the places we retreat to, the places we can't bear
to be found.

*
Photographer unknown
Poem by Stephen Dunn

Prose Poem

Vengeance

The sheer sensuousness of returning an offense. The release. Then no place to go but back into ourselves where suddenly we're cool and numb. That node of anger, that galvanizer, gone. No excuse left to delay living our lives. Maybe only love is as personal. The singularity, the intense focus. Once, though, in existentialism's first grasp, I was content to believe that in time the wicked would hang themselves. Nothing we need do to them. I'd forgotten how hurt won't let philosophy be king, that hurt wears its own crown, wants to rid itself of itself. But so much vengeance is a quiet affair. Just vengeance and me, the cause elsewhere, perhaps in another city, enjoying himself, untroubled by my trouble with him. I've taken him to sleep with me where he's met his proper death. No mercy in that dark realm. And no satisfaction when I woke.

*

Art by Alfred Kubin
Poem by Stephen Dunn