Ed Skoog

KAW, A RIVER

No dystrophy in its pignose canals,
and when I tell myself there are no fish,
a fish jumps. Gray as dishwater
and ongoing like love feels
through the carcasses between river
and interstate, antlers scattered,
new grass gnawing the drought.
Our love is practically like this
and silent and sure, look what
has grown around it. Poetry
is an abbreviation for the language
that emerges at the fault lines
of mind and body—the churn.
A self-interrupted mirror.
It runs up and demands to know
what year it is.
Poems erode more slowly than their surroundings.
Poems have delicate feet.
Poems start the moped and run it into the fence.
Poems apologize for smelling of chlorine.
You thought for years the poem hated you, but it didn’t.
The poem leaves its scarf on the floor.

ED SKOOG is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Run the Red Lights and the just-published Travelers Leaving for the City (Copper Canyon).