Two Poems by Michael Landreth

Premonitions

1

In the morning we opened a bottle like always
and stashed the day in our separate closets,
its possibilities no longer excited us, the heat and the rum
were a fog our refusal to speak settled into.

By the time I gave up on silence
I couldn’t convince you of anything,
I wanted to hold your hands and rub confessions
from your fingertips. That leaving was the same as goodbye
and the words weren’t important. That you would choose bruises
instead of love if they made better stories.

The liquor was gone. You folded your arms
and I went to get more and the wind
bent the trees until I thought they would break.

2

The wind was untying the seams, exploiting
cracks in the world it fit through,
I’d been dreaming and colors
still floated detached and flimsy on the ripples.

Your eyes had turned yellow,
you opened your arms and dropped
a length of time that shook the floor.

3

You fumbled the phone when I called, pretended I woke you.
Your voice was a spider-crawl through glass.
Before I could speak you warned me:
Nightmares turn real if you say them out loud.
You were just as smart as I thought,
smarter than you knew. Look,
they’re going to come true. You’re going to miss it.

Scrapbook Marginalia

Let’s do this again, go back to the pasture
and get drunk watching horses. Let’s throw up
in the weeds and kiss anyway while summer
drops fruit all around us, our thumbs
in the hollow of its throat. If it sounds like I’m falling love,

I’m not. Love stakes its claim in the city,
it seeks the approval of others, the attention of streetlights. Love stretches
our shadows behind us walking home at the end of bad nights.
Those streets are so ugly, let’s not drag them
out there and flatten the grass, let’s not
talk about it in front of the horses.

I will follow you behind the barn again, down to the river and next time
we’ll jump in together, make sure my hair gets wet.
If I’m blushing don’t let it distract you, that’s your eyelashes
against my cheeks, just me coming back from the dead,
it will not mean what you think. When I pull you from the water,

your hands on my shoulders, the sand still warm and the night
filled with angles we could play, my eyes stroking yours
will not mean what you think. Without pictures I’d forget
we ever did this. I won’t be grateful. Do not be impressed.

Michael Landreth is a graduate of the creative writing program at Auburn University and currently lives in Moscow, Idaho, where he is working toward his MFA in poetry at the University of Idaho.