Sea-Sky Threads
The permanently
imperfect line
halves the picture,
the darker bottom bar
bobbing against
the paler nothing.
I know you’re out there.
When Red Eggers first saw
the ocean, visiting
his son, he shook:
“There’s no more land,
it’s the end of the land.”
When a car crash killed
your daddy in Dancy,
you were six. When we
were that age, my cousins
and I tried to hold
jellyfish. Two options
there: sting, or a wobbling
from our hands. Either
way, we buried them
in the sand. Troy once got
a crab shell in the palm
of his foot—his father
squinted, and cut
the fragments out. Some of these
are harder to frame
than others—what to do
with black weeds like
cassette tape tangled
in the dunes. I know
you’re gone—this is how
I live with you now,
stray melodies, driving
just to drive, hanging
at the outskirts, the tide’s
diligent chaos.
Arlington Panels
1. Last Words on Ivy Street
In fogdawn’s light, a treeless yard’s
thick sweep of green, the next’s
garish yellow contemplation—
What’s all this yield? A swelling
mist, leftover rain, the pale beat
on roofs. It must sound good inside
that house, must be nice to sleep
within, to wake the weather, sigh
at design, and all but believe.
2. South Old Glebe
I take the dog out the stairwell door,
stroll the chain link between our building
and duplexes’ backyards. So dark
so early, the cold’s downtrod
like an obsession. I plainly
stare into a bay window: soft light,
small kitchen, a woman washes dishes.
She is being swallowed by the night,
and she is its center.
3. House in Negative Silhouette
The outline of roofs along lit sky, such pretty desolation
in evening’s cadenced light, such clean
diagonals, clarity of bleakness—
When I am sentimental they are beautiful
or depressing, and when I am serious
they stun, so either way—
Among all these apparent disparities,
within shingles’ seethe and sun’s glare,
I couldn’t have been the one to make up this mind.
Andy Vogle grew up in Virginia Beach, spent 13 years in the DC area, and has now been upstate for 8 years, where he teaches high school, works on his PhD in Education, and raises a family. Andy has 5 chapbooks of poems and nonfiction published or forthcoming in AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, English Journal, and Popmatters.