I’m fascinated with frozen moments in time. That one, razor thin instant after a gun goes off, just before the world sets itself back in motion, or the almost impossibly brief glimpse of something between the trees in the forest, gone nearly before it was there. I like to take that “snapshot” and explore it in my own poems. So today I’m going to stroke my own ego a little and post two of my own poems, each of which speaks to that revelatory moment that often occurs immediately after something unpredictable happens.

Threshold

And then the slap that draws a red
salt seam along his lower lip.
He tongues the sudden swell,
tastes her anger in his blood.

What came before was talk,
and the uneasy feeling
that all there was was talk.

But now the strike lingers in the charged air;
the hollow ring in the ear, the thread
of blood mingling among his teeth,
and the space between them left empty
of words, but quickly filling
with what neither anticipates is love.

Report

You, who did not think
this weight could speak,
still hear its single word
inside your inner ear. Now,
heavy and dumb, it presses
down against your palm,
the distal voice whose sound
you can’t recall.