Three Poems

By James Stotts

june eighth

 

a seed stolen from the arboretum and forgotten in the fruitbowl
exploded like a gunshot

 

and what had i expected?
that it might sail on the wind or fly in the gullet

 

might float by when the briars flooded—
but i assumed i’d intervened…

 

it woke me in the night, when
i was ready for any other crime, any other scene

 

 

elegy

 

birch sapling
suckling at
his mother’s
breast

 

and bitches
barking at
the birdlike
stars

 

 

duckpond, four years old

 

кушай, кушай
никого не слушай

 

red patches on my knees
so many dragonflies
on their steeplechase with the mosquitoes
you could barely see the sky

 

but you could see the moon
the lightbugs in the weeds
and the limewhite moths
low in the poplar leaves

Published October 2008