Poem by Maxwell Stenson
This morning we will be simple.
We will collect splayed
seconds, our fingers
anticipating caffeine.
We will offer nothing
in way of robinsong
branches, motions
Aeolian about them.
There’s little time
for casual sublimity,
for drowned blues
beside a broken river.
Steel offices, shield,
crucible or desktop: for these
today will we be simple.
And for twenty minutes
a war can end which
trumpeted never truly
for us, for twenty minutes
we can taste
simple salt, curtailed
lotus, the dawn rolled back
along a lover’s tongue.
This premature light lingers,
lances through limes
and disassembles the mourning chariot.
Maxwell Stenson currently lives and works in Sacramento, California. His poetry has been nominated for Best New Poets, has appeared in Thrush, The Blue Route, Sijo: An International Journal of Poetry and Song, and is forthcoming in The Elevation Review.