Weekly Poem: The Poet at Thirty-four—for Joseph Lease

July 31, 2014

Art / Culture, Poetry

By John Chavez
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We are we & when we are not we
the poet thinks we are a gun

in his head the poet thinks we are a rivulet in the forest
the poet thinks we are we

& when we are we we are a naked moonpearled night
& a child fishing thick shadows

in an alley & when we are not we we are
dawn articulating a cathedraled sky

& we are light & we are freefall and we are floating
& when we are we we are a city block

of hushed cars & voweled walks
& we are a quilt of voices,

a corner store lined with plums & the world’s first morning
& we are night & a man sleeping

in a doorway & when we are not we
we are scarlet flax budding in a rusted Radio Flyer.

 

This poem originally appeared in City of Slow Dissolve from UNM Press.

 

(Photo by Robbert van der Steeg)




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John Chavez

John Chávez is the author of the chapbook Heterotopia, published by Noemi Press, and a co-author of the collaborative chapbook I, NE: Iterations of the Junco, published by Small Fires Press. He earned an MFA from New Mexico State University and a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His poetry has appeared in Cooper Nickel, Diode, Notre Dame Review, Puerto del Sol, Tusculum Review, The Laurel Review, Palabra, Pilgrimage, and Zone 3. His first, full-length collection City of Slow Dissolve (University of New Mexico Press, 2012) won the IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Award) Gold Medal for Poetry. He lives in Denver, Colorado, and teaches at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

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