The Fallen
rain freckles the deck, leaves
sumac nodding like piano keys,
gangs up on a plank and runs for the end.
Poplar leaves struck by drops quake
like the fluttering wings of butterflies,
like a memory waving from so great a
distance it resembles imagination:
You stand at the sink with your back
to the door as water runs in the heap
of foam, your curvature reflected endlessly—
cheek, wrist, elbow, hip, breast—
so minutely you peopled each clean
glass drawn from the sink and rinsed under
the faucet into the crowd, each glistening
plate racked above a second-hand towel,
each sphere swollen with the small sounds
of your leaving: a whisper of perfume circled
between wrists, a sigh pressed from a silk
blouse, the unhinged moan from the door.
…..
This poem is from the chapbook Amends by Randy Koch (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://finishinglinepress.com/product/amends-by-randy-koch/
Amends is Randy Koch’s fourth collection of poems. His other works include Composing Ourselves (Fithian Press, 2002), This Splintered Horse (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and Against the Risen Flesh (forthcoming from Alternating Current Press). A longtime columnist for LareDOS: A Journal of the Borderlands, he earned an MFA at the University of Wyoming and authored the textbook Serving Sentences. His work has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.
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