Oblivious, by Misty Skaggs

Oblivious

If you try and convince me

you can’t smell the rain coming,

I’m liable to conclude

you’re full of shit.

Or else I’d shake my head

and bless your heart.

It’s hard to imagine existing

with your nose stuck in the air

and not a clue what the wind

is trying to tell you.

Listen. The rain crows

are cooing soft warnings

as they pick through the grass

waiting for the worms to wake up.

Look. Every little leaf

turns its pale belly skyward.

There’s a storm coming

and they’re ready to drink it all in.

Misty Skaggs is an author, artist and activist hunkered down at the end of a gravel road in East Kentucky. Read more of her poems and see pictures of her favorite tree on Instagram @mistymarierae.

Comments

Ed Dorn's # 22 From Twenty-four Love Poems

from Jacket The strengthy message here in #22 of 24 Love Songs can be summed up in two lines: ['There is/no sense to beauty. . .' and '. . .How/ the world is shit/ and I mean all of it] What I also like about this brief poem is the interplay between the title of the book and the subject of the poems (love/anti-love (which is not hate)): it's all a mass of contradictions, like love. And I have to say that the shorter poems of the Love Songs and the last book he wrote before dying (Chemo Sábe) seem to me much better and more memorable than the Slinger/Gunslinger poems. These (generally) later poems probably attempt less stylistically, but are more sure-handed, hacked from a soap bar, maybe. Easy to use, but disappear after use. In any case, Dorn is well worth the reading and re-reading, for me, though he'll never become one of my favorites. And doesn't every poet want that, dead or alive? ;-) #22 The agony

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