Christopher Cheney – Two Poems

Christopher Cheney

Two Poems

Mother Ghazal


At night I don’t look at the stars
Sometimes pigeons smash into the stars

I leave my keys in the door

My mother brushes off the stars

Because they’re fading she wants

To love them her chin smudges the stars

Never never leave my mother alone

She’ll feed hamburgers to the stars

She’ll run errands across the air

What winter jackets will she offer the stars?

What blouse will she stain on the wind?

The dead curl up with the most luminous stars

Mother kiss on a beat up blanket under the stars

Karla Ghazal
for Mike Young

Stars are being made inside trailer homes

by underprivileged kids who have been home-

schooled for their whole life. When a star explodes

a black hole appears, sucking at their homes.

They cool newborn stars in a plastic pool.

Sometimes they declothe to give themselves home

made skull tattoos or sniff rubber cement.

When the sky is bright their mothers come home

in cocktail dresses, flip through the channels

catch an hour or two of sleep, leave home.

Karla uses the bathtub to wash socks

while her sister cleans up around the home.

By lunchtime a quasar inside their home.

 

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