3 Poems
Yvonne Stephens
Yvonne Stephens’ chapbook, The Salt Before It Shakes, was published by Hidden Timber Books in 2017. The Dunes Review, Family Stories from the Attic, Eucalypt, and iō Literary Journal have also published her work. Small-town librarian, amateur mycologist, and advocate for mental health, she lives with her family in Bellaire, Michigan. You can find her on Instagram at @ynlsbell
I WANT TO SEE
At the house today I was able to catch a downy woodpecker and release it out of my hands.
I opened them slowly, a pair of wings around a pair of wings.
Our house has feet of snow, and bird footprints, and a squirrel hops though what was the living room.
Tonight in the new home we’re renting, I saw my daughter count her reflections in the vanity mirror, as one mirror closed in on another. She got to fourteen and was smiling. I remember smiling at that infinity.
We’re folding in on ourselves and coming up new.
There were deck stairs there, a wood pile for the winter, for the cat to hibernate by while it turned to warmth.
A char pile, I sat on it.
The loaf of bread on the counter is unfolding into mouse pellets. There are mice nesting in the dresser downstairs. Storing seeds in their new home.
I bought a sweatshirt that says WHAT IF IT ALL WORKS OUT? with a few purple asters by it.
Soon the remains will be demolished. I want to see some of this erasure poem.
The excavator said couches are problematic – when crushed in the dumpster, they bounce back.
FLIGHT
after James Merrill’s poem “In the Dark”
It just spends
like three birds out of that tree.
It just spends
and two more now fly.
Three to five birds in this poem
three to five birds holding sky.
The dog is distance barking
his voice held in sky.
Yesterday five turkeys
blue and red in the head.
I focused a beam on them
I did not know they could fly.
Have you seen a turkey
branched up in a tree?
Maybe because of a dog
its bird toes clutch.
Remember the wait for the barks to stop?
I waited it out in a tree when I was a child.
And if you shone a beam on me
three out of five of me would take flight.
I have infinite tenderness for you
and all the food you drop on your shirt
and all the times you stand in the pantry eating chocolates
A friend once said don’t should on yourself
Ok!
My infinite tenderness for you means let’s paint rocks
and stop and look closely at things
Maybe hold hands
Maybe dig a big hole in the ground
and fill it with water
and fill it with paper boats
and blow on the boats like birthday cakes and their candles
Light the boats on fire
Tender as mud is tender
Tenderness for you like a lily opens and closes
That’s it, tender as all the day
Infinitely tender as all the days
