Gary Whitehead Poems

When I open its pages my dog stirs
from his repose on the couch beside me
to sniff at the spine and trim. His gray ears
lift to listen, and I hear what he hears:
...

If memory had fingers, it would wring
from me each forgettable day we shared.

The double-date drive to Plum Island
in the pouring rain, windows fogged
...

There should be a word for the way
they look with just one eye, neck bent,
for beetle or worm or strewn grain.
"Gleaning," maybe, between "gizzard"
...

In the garden of the mind the best thought
will never bloom as beautifully as this
lily, lemon-yellow and freckled red,

four tongues lolling out of a single mouth
...

Rolling nests of the prairie,
prickered and denuded and dead,
clutching at clumps, skipping across
asphalt, whole shrubs ripped out
...

I wake now to a house as cold
as your side of our double bed.

Across the threshold, in the dark
hall, the thermostat sparks
...

For two nights now it's wakened me from dreams
with a sound like paper being torn, reams

of it, a scratching that's gone on for hours.
Blind in the dark, I think of my father's
...

I like to slice them along the seam,
blade balanced on the fulcrum of pit
—that density, like bone, inside the flesh—
and roll until it's cut clean through.
...