Odyssey
left in the known world,
and I am the placard
saying this table
has been reserved.
A pity, the rain shower never came.
A pity, it lasted so long.
I had hoped to be wafer-thin:
a mere idea, drifting down the hall.
As it stands, I am stolid,
irrefutable but without value,
like an animal. Aren’t we all.
The pastoral’s end is nigh.
Free love is the con of cons.
This is the hour
of the anonymous poet.
Sail on, high ship, sail on.
Rapture
This is where you leave me.
Plastered to an oak tree
that once bore our initials,
now marked as diseased—
Armillaria Root Rot,
Bacterial Wetwood,
American Chestnut Blight—
while afterworld visions
filter through the breeze.
This is where you leave me.
Wolf-eyed, arrhythmic,
wrapped head to toe
in flame-retardant clothes.
Beauty is as beauty does,
but what does, save for Helen,
beauty do except flee?
See, letting go is all
in the wrist. The flexion,
then release of world,
a plastic Frisbee.
Water Lyric
Lapidary blue, you
fall from great heights
to land among
monk fruit strewn
on the forest floor.
Your currents tug
me through the
slough of midday;
your moisture keeps
my lipid barrier strong.
You are still pools
covered in scum,
wherein lies the disease
of lyme; and you are
the rushing falls,
falling on the rock
you eventually smooth.
After centuries of
lidless sleep, I enter
the canal, which leads
to the ocean. Beneath
it all, quiet pulsing
of canoe oars:
silent worm sleeping
in a bottomless bottle
of el Jimador.
Earth Lyric
Milkweed, thistle.
A plant that grows
only when shunned.
What I want to know is
would a wild animal
force another wild animal
on a gang plank, or to strip
its defenses for show, for fun?
Look around. There’s so few rules
to hang gliding; it’s all about the feel.
There is something droll about the
human endeavor, our damage
to freshwater habitats, then
backpedaling attempts to heal.
Flowers heavy with theology.
Erstwhile prophets of doom.
I know what my problem is:
global thinking, insufficient data.
Let’s you and I be paramours.
Let’s put a woman on the moon.
Author of Vox Populi (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017), Virginia Konchan’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Best New Poets, and elsewhere.
