MARK P. BOWEN
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Another Way of Saying Something Entirely Different

For a time, I’ll just sit here, while the silence here
stares with its one gray eye and makes me think
that my life is completely ruined, the way
I think of lives that aren’t mine and how they

are completely ruined.
I’m sure the sun still shines somewhere else,
maybe more so, in brighter colors, causing the people
there to believe it’s friendly, even though

it’s not, and they’ll be happy with their garish
new friend, even as the sun, or someone directly
behind the sun, is coming up
with different ways to defeat them.

 

Remedial Metaphysics

There are certain acts we blame
on the recklessness of people who have survived
much longer than they should. Half-naked
in the joy of lingering, they’re caught up

in crude pantomimes of our envy of them.
Sometimes, on these bright occasions, children
peer around telephone poles, as if
from behind faded and musty curtains,

hoping to see something mothers normally
would never allow them to see, that is
two old men, looking like portraits going to ruin,
arguing the finer points of death.
 

 

No One’s Hand

Taking a moment, a thin and lost bird, the color
of an unkempt child’s oily hair,
carefully set both feet firmly on the ground
and raised its chilling head back.

Its call wasn’t proud, not the sound that raises
kings from their deathbeds, it put a tremble
in no one’s hand. The bird’s mother stands
in the back of the mind at the sound, shaking
her head slowly back and forth, like a scythe.