PoetrySpring 2020

Toward a Theory of Likeness: Landscape – Nicholas Molbert

the roadkill        strung on the main drag
double as royal    flush when the vultures

join    it becomes a catholic mass   the frogs
are ceremonial      masters vying

for singular spotlight         the gulls are
are not are too are not are tooing     through the pines

who leak the secret they once fringed         a throw
used once to cover               a cloud jagged death

etch-a-sketched     and schmooze
with the yogurt sky   no      the sky is a prayer

swooped in cursive    of foreign tongue     the sugarcane
fields a place      mat for the close             moon

the linchpin oil rig      prevents the wheeling
marsh from unhinging      an armadillo slumped

looks like a sopped towel tossed           after a long shower
the propped moon         the negative

of a redfish tail’s onyx-eye     the bugs gripped
in the porch screen is a girl’s         leaked mascara

I say bomb shelter    to the hollowed crab carcass   I say teeth
to the coon trap sharp with wait             I say safe

zone to the empty bucket    or widowed locks to the spines
of trash fish                   no the moon propped

before midnight     looks like a bullet hole
through the negative             of a yield signyield sign


Originally from Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, Nicholas now lives and writes in Cincinnati. His chapbook, Goodness Gracious, won Foundlings Press’s 2018 Wallace Award. His forthcoming second chapbook will be part of Foundlings Press’s Strays series. You can find his poetry and prose in Birmingham Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, DIAGRAM, Mississippi Review, Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, and Pleiades among others

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