Homestead, Sure

Lindsey D. Alexander

                                  But then there’s the beauty of the rodeo:

		the buck and nod, 
				                      that arch and stretch
			        against gravity.

	
		    A bronco’s no square peg,
and neither am I.

		Pegs or no, we both flex
  			our more resistant muscles—			

			strong-legged, strong-willed.

To learn might
                             is the ticket.


The power of my unrelenting?

				         When I expose 
						         exactly
			how pure, how—
			           if stubborn enough— 
			                 entire I can be—

Sleepless in Indiana, I Contemplate the Age-Old Arts

Dog that won’t stop barking and all I can think:
I don’t know anything about stars—		

not what they’re called or how they form, but how

we turn stars into stickers to surprise
our children and assure them You are better
than normal children. 				

On boat decks, sailors cry out Orion!
			and they see a man,
but they’ve only drawn stick-figure self-portraits
of fire and longing. 


		      I tried to sketch
my face one night with stronger brow lines,
higher cheekbones, but it was all nose, scaly 
water moccasin: a viper me.

Lindsey D. Alexander

2017

Reflection on First Season of a Marriage

Never get a husband. They never will make cheese plates without a fuss. Get a dog
with thumbs.	

Sometimes when my husband does the dishes, I rampage. I rampage when
                                     for some reason 
                                     the glasses look
dirtier than before a washing or I remember 
                 a loneliness. I shape that loneliness into a broom. I use 
                 it to sweep 
         away happiness,
a state that quite often can lead to complacency, and also to fly off
the broom’s handle inside me.

Lindsey D. Alexander

2017

The Dream and a Shame

I was an observer: my own student
and my best teacher
in the forest working the lyrics together.
There were bees in his beard,
in a good way.

She cupped his chin: this
was platonic and also the source
of some honey. He fed her
two lines he had kept inside his soul
for years. I woke to write them and could

only remember alone.
He left and she
grabbed a banjo from a tree—
completed the song and bettered
it, besides. Something like “The Passionate Shepherd”

Lindsey D. Alexander

2017

Poems

Homestead, Sure

More by this poet

Sleepless in Indiana, I Contemplate the Age-Old Arts

Reflection on First Season of a Marriage

The Dream and a Shame

Poems

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Homestead, Sure

More by this poet

Sleepless in Indiana, I Contemplate the Age-Old Arts

Reflection on First Season of a Marriage

The Dream and a Shame

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