Four Poems by Sara Clancy

 

Weak Signal

There's a shimmer on the line
of my night phone.

A dusting of sparkle
on the winter treeline

dividing this life from the new
place where you rest.

I try to sing you my greeting
in the mezzo soprano

you expect. In turn, I hope for
a duet but only get half.

So I tell you I'm fine.
Really, I am.

      

A Shorthand of Colour

There is April sky

in her sweater gift, 

a coffee​ cup matched 

to a Florida​ bird, 

and the jewel she hung​

around my neck is the flash​

of a family joke on my blue​

Mustang dash. I know​

that deserts and deep 

Maine bays​ are different 

shades of the same​ grief.

Another dusk shakes off 

its salmon shawl

and weaves my night​ 

into a violet​ gown 

of mourning.​

Jump Scare

Maybe the stars came out again

over an empty orchard and frog 

song cued that we were back 

to normal, each settled into our 

comfortable complaint. There is no 

looming presence from the last 

catastrophe, when something ragged 

dogged our heels, the keys wet in muddy 

fingers, the engine that turned over 

and over, but just wouldn't catch.

It's a cheap conceit, this rerun

none of us can leave. A touch of breath

just behind the ear, a rancid word

that changes everything. 

A Witch's Obloquy Against Samuel Alito

As if your weak invocation

of a backwards spoken spell

could reroute our resolve,

I direct you to my cauldron

of circumstance. These bones

are crooked enough, by God,

ruby soaked and upright

for now.

A vigil of one awaits you

at the state line, her papers

forged, her pact with the moon

long expired, but its gamine purpose

intact. You believe it's me singing

a lullaby to my own autonomy,

but it's only the tide pulling you

mercifully away.

We will never meet but I am

still here, sitting with my sisters

in a circle of cats, our cult

of familiars whose iron eyes

will cut straight through

your terrible facsimile

of night. 

Sara Clancy a Philadelphia transplant to the Desert Southwest. Her chapbook Ghost Logic won the 2017 Turtle Island Quarterly Editors Choice Award and she is an Associate Editor for Poetry at Good Works Review. Her poems have appeared, among other places, in Off the Coast, The Linnet's Wings, Crab Creek Review, The Madison Review, and Verse Wisconsin. She lives in Arizona with her husband, their dog, a cross-eyed cat and a 26 year old goldfish named Darryl.