Joshua Coben

Raft

 

 

Darkness settles in the room
like feathers falling on a lake
still rippled from a rising flock.
Two dreamers float across the gloom,

arms entwined to form a raft,
mouths softening as if agape
at something dawning in their sleep,
moored loosely so they’re free to drift.

Holding each other, they hold a place
in the wakers’ world, a tepid peace.
Dreaming doubles them, as a swan

in a pool’s reflection rides its twin,
their bodies stilled by this embrace
while underneath the webbed feet spin.

Spoils

I want the flower bed
of you and not the flower:
soil that grips the root
and blackens rain;

not the blowsy dame
in the blooming hat, but the dirt
she’s standing in: fermenting
spoils heaped to her shins,

vermiculite and scat,
dark matter where day begins.

---

Joshua Coben is the author of two poetry collections, Maker of Shadows (Texas Review Press, 2010), winner of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, and Night Chaser (David Robert Books, 2020), a finalist for the Vassar Miller Prize, the New American Poetry Prize, and the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, The Cincinnati Review, College English, Narrative, Natural Bridge, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Salamander, and Verse Daily. A St. Louis native, he lives with his family near Boston and works as an elementary school teacher and librarian. Visit him online at joshuacoben.com.