Two Poems
Benjamin Seanor
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Discovering Your Lionness
Wherever there is abundance, it seems, it will be accompanied by the forces of ecstatic devouring...
—Jane Hirshfield
For example, a person who breathes
the red back into fast food tomatoes,
knows the right amount of color
to signal health without seeming ridiculous.
Meanwhile, we prowl, watching the river scatter
sun mulch on little quivering arms, giving a Coke
to the wind, fries to the dirt, seeing our allotted
world: perfect as a calendar square.
The day gives itself to us, to emeralding
and crimsoning, because we have all this time
to display ourselves as something special
anyone with some sense could spot.
Above us, the trees have conspired to shred
the sky; the shade created is the steam
we swish our tails and yawn
our fangs and stretch our claws in.
As we lounge in the heated grass,
grow our manes for the flattering light,
every small thing tries to show us the world
and the people it broke:
after a long day of blowing on the diced
and the sliced, our wizard comes home
to be alone and have a beer
or two beers or no beers.
Every empty night, there are children
and women and men
out of reach in our shiny,
roaring nowhere.
And now the need to sleep
this headache into someone else’s life.
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Library in the Morning, Florida
It is time for the seafood friers to gurgle in our little touristy restaurants and
that is the sun.
I get in my car and the radio is all pocket lint and thumpa thumpa.
Everyone is looking into the cellophane of the American morning and thinking
uh-huh and of course, which are good things to think when forgetting
sugared coffee.
Cars are breathing on the dead raccoons and possums and squirrels that lay
like unwanted gifts on the road and the day opens like a soda can.
Their bodies are sad and alone and not really bodies anymore.
In the library, the books will be whispering we, but I know we and they are
no we.
Books are only the candy wrappers of a we.
I will place returned books with the overlooked books and they’ll all whisper
we as I slide them in the central illusion of order.
The whole thing is like a little outer space patrons are unexcited to float
through.
I know that when the morning mutters grey light it is time to dedicate the
self to the day.
I walk from the yawn of the parking lot, past the excitable book drop, the
sleeping flag pole, and see the sandhill cranes who own the adjacent
park.
But I am feeling myself for real and yes yes yes.
The need to grab everyone by the collar, tell them we’re the little institutions
of a we.
Miles of intestines shining and humming, so many grumble-bones hugging
each other, the thousand quiets that make up blood.
People often forget work is only showing your softest, loveliest self to those
who will not look.
Our snowbirds will arrive soon to hush the books and to remind them they
lost.
The snowbirds will whisper to the books that silence says the most now and
then I will turn on the public monitors so they can send messages to
their bored grandchildren.
We could all’ve stayed in bed, as naked as books. As full up, too.
Everyone is wearing plastic wraparound sunglasses that make them feel like
chrome rims in the elastic humidity.
Everyone is moving unthinkingly past the sandhill cranes and their red masks
and the dead street mammals and their muckeyes.
They are thinking yes and next, whistling, snug in the catalog of cities and
such, the world that depends upon the pages and pages of us, and I am
just trying to get some work done here.