September 2016
Richard Nester
ranester@uci.edu
ranester@uci.edu
I hail from Floyd, VA, a rural town off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Southwestern Virginia, a place to which I return on a regular basis to care for my elderly parents. Most of the time though, now that I have retired from my job as instructor in a writing center at UC Irvine, I write and play the harmonica in Southern California. I am the author of two collections, Buffalo Laughter (Alabaster Leaves, 2014) and Gunpowder Summers (Alabaster Leaves, 2016), and have published poetry and essays in many journals and anthologies.
Arches National Monument: Ankles Blessed and Broken
This morning I want to eat the desert whole,
lie down with its rain water
full in my mouth
and flower
in a vast encyclopedia
swollen with names,
sage, monkey bush, creosote,
dark juniper
dripping like steak juice.
The desert is not a leftover.
These are not bones.
This is the feast.
Let me fill my belly with awe
and come out bloated and bleary
or else go down on my knees
like a dumb pony
starved too long.
Let the bread of these ankles
be broken over these stones,
meat for the mouse, and the jay,
and the coyote mother, spare
from suckling her brood
on this morning, bright
with the loud voice of the sun,
with the treble of the moon,
under red cliffs drilled,
the way my eyes are drilled,
by dawn-infested tides
for a breakfast of bird's nests.
I want to die like the fat man
who orders the whole menu
and never moves again
except with his mouth and his hands
to signal surrender.
God, alimentary, give me my blessing.
©2016 Richard Nester
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF