Justin Wymer

Three Poems

MAN IN HOPE

The man in hope of better guises shot
the thing he thought would not be missed. It hid
in brush in knots like sudden scurvy, between
the berry and brittle vine, between shade
branches cinched. The thing whose tint
was just enough to make the man revere
its blood. And having just enough his own
to know a hollow in a thicket is
unlikely to complain, complicit in
its own departure, the man opened his mouth
and gnashed. The thing could’ve flinched.
But there was nothing to be found.
The thing, unshot, would dilate among moths.
Add to this the blush of certain actions. Stain
on left incisor from what was swift and
heavy on the clover.
                                     Once it’s over,
a man like me is only ever choosing.
His coat will never own its form. His coat
is just a thing boughs dappled while he
tried gunning down a present absence.
Look here: in the center of his life I keep on
painting, so the once becomes a sometimes.
He shot. He glimpsed. He heard a thing be still
and went to find it. He left the woods.
The stand would be the place it sat in.
There is a logic to the fog-choked pines
like the stain on a rubythroat’s querulous gullet.
He’s got to remember to get his coat before
he locks the door. He isn’t trying to hurt a thing.
Something came through and he forgot how to.

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