Robert Rorabeck Poems

The deer make love to their roads in the
Golden keys, while girls just as gold touch themselves
To the waves
In golden chains, swinging, saying spells to the moon:
...

One child yelling in the court of
A scattering room- mother and father gone to
Oblivion,
Two sisters both with boyfriends across the
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Wearied by her day’s long work,
She finally draws away
And prepares for rest.
She looks onward as her
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Ships sail on my glass,
And I drink to them, and bring all of that
Weather to my lips;
The colors flush,
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Distended bellies under skies or highways
While the fires are roaring, and the Columbian women are
Selling in the flea market with the tattoos
On their shoulder blades like brown wings: where will it
...

Liquor of her pearl-brown shoulders, and all of
The night the moon: I think, who does she make love
To now,
As the trailer parks sway underneath the cinders-
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If you drive into the fire you will see how the
Fire works, how the deer and the bear run over even the finest
Of maidens-
How the tourists stop to listen and count the antlers
...

Drinking in a church of Apaches- not Navajos-
Face scarred and changing like my body,
My grandfather is in peril in Tennessee, already wanting to go:
And my parents sleep in a bed of wallow fire
...

Repeated as the day consumes- wildfires trying to
Kiss hot air balloons:
Words on an uneasy stage, unicorns overused:
My parents on the highest parapets being kissed at by
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And then they call us, so here we are, open chested like
Banners licking the eager wounds of a flood,
And I don’t know if you have exactly seen them:
But I have seen them: I have seen them almost touching down:
...