Thursday, August 24, 2017

More Poetry By John Yohe

John Yohe has worked for the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service for sixteen years as a firefighter and now a fire lookout.

Your love

I lift your love out of its cage
writhing in my hands
hissing and rattling
open mouth fangs
scales smooth and slippery
an earth scent

I lower your love scared and angry
to the ground
to walk upon
to test my faith
to demonstrate my dominion
and your love accepts my weight
and I speak in tongues

raising your love again
draping it around my neck
it rises
glaring
as if to strike
as if to bite
but instead lowers itself
nuzzling
down into my shirt


The day before the wedding

The day before the wedding she and I
met at the lake and took a walk along
the beach with shoes in hand the sun still bright
though setting fast the wind and waves still strong
and loud
                our feet in cool wet sand and she
looked down and said no more tomorrow I’ll
be married we can still be friends and it
was no surprise I know that women see
these things as endable like that and I
do not and grabbed her hair to kiss her but
she pushed away
                             we turned around to go
back to our lives and she looked at me
and shivered and asked me quietly do
you know where wind comes from
                                                it comes from heat




lv, Heather

John–

Had a good day this afternoon. Went out with Joe to Sweetwaters. We had drinks and we read. I read Galway Kinnell’s Three Books, and Joe read some lame-ass book on how to make a million dollars. Christ, how do I end up with these people, really? The entire time in the café I was looking out the window, and the sun was out and hitting our table and I kept thinking that Geoffrey was sitting across from me rather than Joe. How terrible, I know but it was actually very nice. So long as I didn’t look at Joe or talk to him I could actually imagine that it was Geoff. And I kept wishing that he’d walk in somehow. Yes, I am a goner on this one. Yes, indeed, but for the most part, I’m enjoying myself. We ate a pear tart, Joe and I. And I nearly cried at how beautiful it was in the sunlight, and how wonderful it tasted, and how I’d give anything to be sharing it with Geoff rather than Joe. First off, Joe ate over half of the thing without even thinking about it. Geoff never would have done that. I am constantly thinking of being someone else’s girlfriend. God, why do I do this? What I was thinking in that chair, at that table, in the sunlight, while drinking my latte, was wouldn’t it feel really wonderful if Geoff came into the café and came up behind me and put his arms around my shoulders and kissed my jaw, just under my ear, before saying hello very low and then sitting down opposite of me (where Joe was) in essence replacing Joe. That’s what I was thinking. Okay sweetness, must go now. I am the most awful girlfriend in the universe. Good thing you never went out with me.

                                                            lv, Heather

In the morning your husband calls

In the morning your husband calls with a question
about your son's band practice and you stand naked
looking out the hotel window explaining about
your other son's football practice later
and I think of minor guitar chords
because you are the type of woman
who thinks herself merely plain
though men fall in love with you over
a Victoria's Secret model any day
with your sense of humor that can make fun
of Victoria's Secret models
and our love of their underwear
though this is only a minor event isn't it?
one more night and you'll fly back to Omaha
and I'll fly back to Kalamazoo
and the rain that covers you one day

will cover me the next but I'm not sorry

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