Elaine Sexton
Two Poems
Fear, Itself
I dreamt I was killing myself with
heavy cream, whipped
to top a key lime pie.
The pie is killing me because
citrus is bad for my gut,
which I ignore. But my gut
does not. Even here
my gut shows up. And
how could it not? We are
what we eat. My arteries
calcify, signs of closures.
I hope this is not the case
with my heart. Yesterday
I paused on a busy road,
all backed up, to let a skin-head
driver & his very young son
pass. I know, or suspect, he voted
poorly. And wait to find signs
of his proclivities to be
plastered to the rear his truck. But
do not. Why fear
what isn’t there––when
there’s more than enough to fear––
that is.
CENTO, MIXTAPE: BEFORE + AFTER
INAUGURATION DAY, 2021
I am alive — I guess —
how would I know —
if I am still thinking —
I know —
I am I because my little dog
knows me —
and no one else
— If he could speak he might
say: I remember you always
at the top of your lungs:
even if you never spoke,
even if you never spoke
lying in a hammock —
in a field of sunlight between
two pines putting two + two
together in a box.
Sources: Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Danez Smith, James Wright
—Submitted on 01/19/2021 to the erstwhile Poems in the Afterglow series
Elaine Sexton is the author of Prospect/Refuge (Sheep Meadow Press, 2015), Causeway (New Issues, 2008), and Sleuth (New Issues, 2003). Her poems, reviews, and essays have appeared widely in American Poetry Review, Five Points, Oprah Magazine, Pleiades, Poetry, and other journals. She teaches poetry at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute, and has been guest writing faculty at the City College of New York (CUNY). A member of the National Book Critics Circle, Sexton serves as the visual arts editor for Tupelo Quarterly. Online at elainesexton.org
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
