Night of the Full Moon
I have nothing to write
except the rattle
against the window,
the sound of encroaching
winter. The gray woolens
of the clouds part,
and the silver disc
rises in the sky. The leaves
speak again of the dying
flowers, the comforts.
The road is quiet,
and it does not know your name.
As Soon as I Step Away
As soon as I step away,
the bottles fly. As soon
as I step away, everything
repeats. The night’s crimson
shadows percolate persimmons,
the dawn’s slippers casual
like spilled words, syllables,
the detritus of delight. As soon
as I step away, the day breaks
into its usual panoply of color,
its tidbits of song. L’Allegro
sauntering upon the avenue,
flaneur of the everyday.
These the images of myself,
the fantasias of a shift
at the desk, of six hours
in front of a class. No escape,
no return. This is not so much
a song of regret as a key-legend
to the pathways, a telex
explaining the default wave.
The turntable moves less
the closer to the center you are.
At the center, the axis is perfect-
ly still, like the eye of the day
as the dawn breaks over the rim
of what we call the world.
Jorge Sánchez received his MFA from the University of Michigan and currently teaches at the Chicago Academy for the Arts and Wilbur Wright College. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, Nimrod, and elsewhere. He lives in Chicago with his wife and son.
Photo credit: Jim Larrison (https://www.flickr.com/photos/larrison)