Lucas Jorgensen
—
Non-Epiphany
The only moment God climbs
off my back is when He has to
click the clock forward again,
soothe the water in the ice tray,
polish the solid earth
into sand. For two weekends
I put on an executioner's robe,
smelled hickory under
Don Quixote’s breath, threw him
into the middle of a mock tavern
as a song about little birds
began. I lived a second life
like that, hours at a time,
convinced by costumes, rocks
dappled on a wooden set.
To the exterminator
I’m a bachelor, could benefit
from fewer waterbugs, less oil
overnight, curdled in the pan.
To the preacher, I’m all
woolen. My head corralled
between two fence posts of task.
Each evening my father races
the shrinking of his shadow to trim
the grass & square the hedge.
& me, I prefer to smother
the fire before it catches,
eyes closed, in the lilts
between my bedmate’s breaths.
That moment, like the one before
the body unlocks in climax,
when it can’t.
Lucas Jorgensen is a poet and educator from Cleveland, Ohio. He holds an MFA from New York University where he was a Goldwater Fellow. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Texas and reads poetry for The Iowa Review and American Literary Review. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Fugue, Poet Lore, and others
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