To the Chimmmney Sweep

This poem originally appeared in Gravel Magazine, which has since changed its focus from writing

To the Chimmmney Sweep

Parasympathetic prroblemms:

alveoli avvoid airrr, ventricles

ciircummvent. Dermis draggs.

Found you iin the phonebook.

Brrush these burrnned briicks

craackk creosote ccatacombs.

Above all ellse, extinnguisssh

shaadowws of former flames.

Etch exactttly. Make mortaar

millky, sooothe trachea ache.

Bring brooms. Severral sizes.

Remove resiiduual soot, seeal

rraw roots of naaked nerrves.

Huurry: hearth hhhhesitated.

Incenndiary eventt imminent.

.


Attention - for Earl Jackson

This poem originally appeared as part of the Lament for the Dead project, which published an elegy for every person killed by police and every police officer killed in the line of duty, in the summer of 2015. 

Earl Jackson, 59, a career corrections officer himself, was killed in a confrontation with police in Alachua County, FL on July 25, 2015. The first officer on the scene heard shots fired while he was calling for backup, and these shots, though not witnessed, were determined to be "at the officer." For this reason, Jackson was denied a traditional law enforcement burial. Jackson died of asphyxiation while being pinned down by a vehicle called a Rook, which assists SWAT teams in wooded areas.

 

Attention

for Earl Jackson

 

I will be your honor guard

cover you in my blues

cast down stars upon your casket

and let the stained stripes run

 

I will raise my hand to my head

stand stone-faced and lock-jawed

with glistening panic eyes and

halt there

 

I will fold and refold the flag

until it makes sense—

long after the bugle is done

wailing its thin song into the air

 

Kristen Roach

 

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Inventing Solace

This poem originally appeared in The Heartland Review and was given a Special Mention for the Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize.

 

Inventing Solace

 

I am not harboring dark thoughts today,

I have been shipping them out to sea

 

pushing them in open boats

unarmed into the tide.

 

I have been pitching stale rye at pigeons

from the floorboard of a doorless car

 

folding paper airplanes from the pages of Life magazine,

rubbing old wool against the mold of a catcher’s mitt too far gone.

 

I have been hanging Buddhist prayer flags on strings

within the vast emptiness of my chest,

 

breaking bottles against the painted names of ships,

aiming to quell my faintness of heart

& call it the beginning of something good.

 

 

Kristen Roach

 

Fishermen in Costa da Caparica, Portugal