Clayton Clark
Introduced by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
There is such a deeply intelligent and multi-layered humor in Clayton Clark’s poetry. She has a keen eye and fiercely focused attention to detail. I love her unique & compelling observations: subtle, big-hearted and metaphorically delightful. The three poems below reflect her talent for precision and visual clarity.
Grief as Present
Not sure how to thank you for
all the flowers, I’ve received
in your name. Not sure why
you, as backdrop, are needed
to make light brighter, make
roses smell sweeter, bring tears
to relieve stress. Does it make
you giddy, Grief, to push us
to the cliff’s edge then drag
some lucky ones back with
a quick snap of your leash? Joy
is fleeting but you, once you
appear, remain resolute in your
reason for being. Such a deep,
dark bed of sorrow you supply.
As long as we exist we’ll have
to accept you’re here to stay, try
to see clearly we can’t live with-
out you in our own Milky Way.
Ode to Confusion
Housefly, with your rapid wing-beat, you zoom
through a perfect blue-day on the search
for feces, garbage, fresh or rotting fruit,
your prize supplied by this world of gush and dirt.
You’ll seek and land, spit on your find, suck up
your fare and buzz off again until you’re
stopped by unseen strings that seem corrupt
to you, small one, as you’re spun into dinner.
I think it’s a generous thing, this shock,
the literal ball of confusion, that turns
while one seeks to discern how to unlock
the secret of what looms, who has the last word.
I hope you were confused before the spider
bit in and put an end to your desire.
—Thwt, Thwt, Thwt Through the Drizzly Day and into the Gray Night
The spousal argument begins to take shape, thwat,
thwat, thwat, slaps itself into a ball. It grows
then rolls out the front door, past my blue-robed
neighbor who halls in his trash bin, shakes
his head as though, Oh, no, not again. On and on
the argument goes, down the street, up the onramp
onto the highway where it speeds out of control.
The round bout bounces, flops and finally goes
flat on the cold, hard shoulder of gravel we later
spit onto our pillows. This after having crawled
back into the bed of vows, weeds and strawberries.
One kiss and the dum-dum song of who’s right,
who’s wrong levitates the two of us ‘til we float
together in the moonlit swirl of this dark evening
that began with a candlelit dinner. We pinch wet
thumb to finger and pssssssh— extinguish the night.
Then he whispers, But you have to admit—
(Title from “Consolation on the Susitna” by Dallas Crow, published in San Pedro River Review)
Clayton Clark is a poet and painter. She studied Art History at UCLA. She’s known as a responsible lock-picker and has been published in SALT, the anthology While You Wait, the Anacapa Review, and was awarded Prompt Poem of the Month at RATTLE.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar is a Belgian-American poet, translator, professor, and former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California. Her most recent collection is Lately: New and Selected Poems (Sungold Editions, 2024).
Thank you for reading Volume 3, Number 3
