Author's TWs: "Tilt" has battle scene images and refers to Jeanne d’Arc being burned at the stake. “He is in the mines" contains images of my grandfather’s experiences as a coal miner, which includes a reference to a death.
TILT
The sword bearer runs to keep up with the vast
madness, the chaotic charge through the stained
field. The world weighs as much as Jeanne d’Arc’s
armor, if not more.
I follow her
through flailing bodies, a caked ballet,
& when she loses her grip on the broadsword
she had found beneath the altar at her church,
& it falls into armed
darkness, I lift
up the next blade hilt first, my hands
red, & this moment is done. Ours
is as singular as a lost sword, glints
of blood jet the edge
of a ghost battlefield,
I will not forget how the sword claimed
her, was held steady before her eyes,
even as she disappeared into ash.
We do not know what will save us.
SMOLDER
From Van Gogh’s Painting, “Wheat Field with Crows”
I
Van Gogh, knee deep in grassy reeds,
all wind & sun, easel burns
orange in the light, brush stabs
the canvas.
Amber stalks bend,
black birds circle low in the wind.
The fire still smolders in him.
II
Grey depths shade where stars scatter,
stalks bend behind. Unless fire,
art can’t happen.
Four paws grow gargoyle edges,
body cracking from the grasses,
where black snakes ripple like ribbons.
Crows circle, wind lashes.
Something snarls, leaps from the canvas.
The fire smolders, is ablaze.
HE IS IN THE MINES
He is in the mines, the kind
that make dark slashes across green
hills. With pick & blade, he stacks
the black coal into mule-drawn cars.
Night makes dark slashes on green.
They are all from somewhere else.
They roll black coal into mule cars
& like how their differences are the same.
They are all from somewhere else.
They could get lost here, watch
how their differences become the same
& how the coal teaches them to be.
They could get lost here, watch
how quick a mine can bury them,
& how the coal teaches them to be.
A redbird sings by the mine.
How quick a mine can bury them,
the hills, too. He stacks coal.
A redbird sang when he died.
He is in the mines.
Lynn Finger’s poetry has appeared in 8Poems, Perhappened, Wrongdoing Mag, Twin Pies, Book of Matches, Drunk Monkeys and Not Deer Magazine. Lynn is an editor at Harpy Hybrid Review and works with a group that mentors writers in prison. Follow Lynn on Twitter @sweetfirefly2 and @lynmichf on Instagram.