Dameion Wagner
—
perches
I wanted you to see the narrow
blue haze of morning how
streaked rains water the
small leaves that get heavy and
bitter, rimmed with a thin beauty,
between us thirsty air winds up
into pale cries with little told.
You must understand this —
today you opened a cookbook,
cut the carrot, celery and onion,
questioned fresh over dried
thyme, focused your attention on
the words, pretended that some
sparrow had perched outside the
window on a lilac branch, or on
any branch on any tree through
any window. I know what it’s
like to be lonely when you’re in
the room, the disappearing, the
small leaves under dark, thin
beauty.
Dameion Wagner lives and works in Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, As It Ought To Be Magazine, Tilde: A Literary Journal, Cider Press Review, and elsewhere. His reviews appear in Heavy Feather Review, The Rumpus, and The Adroit Journal. He was nominated for Sundress Publications' 2020 Best of the Net Anthology,’ is a 2018 recipient of the Academy of American Poets University Prize (“Momma's Boy,” poets.org), and won Miami University’s 2017 Jordan- Goodman Poetry Prize. Milk & Cake Press published his first full-length collection, Bird Wild, in 2020.
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