Concentric Circles
I loved a man once who would say Watch
and cover his mouth with his fist
and heave into it, tip his head back
to puff smoke out from deep inside,
and I knew he wanted me to Wow and ask
where the fire was burning
but I would only nod and say
My turn.
Many Good People Implored Me To Pray
I did sense God –
Jacket puddled at an empty bus stop
Half a bird egg in the roadside gravel
Un-bussed table of crumbs –
I was always just missing him
Many good people and I, we did try
to save each other, prod each other forward
The safest man I knew would tell me so often
to call God my father, he could never hear
God asking him to be one
I once read my grandmother’s journal in which
she did nothing but comment on the weather
She found 365 ways to talk about the sun withholding –
The sky is cloaked in patchy wool
Surely there is light beyond that gray parade –
She never did just come out with it:
I am freezing down here. Where the fuck are you?
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Cyndie Randall‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Crab Creek Review, Longleaf Review, The Pinch Journal, MORIA, and elsewhere. She works as a therapist and lives among the Great Lakes.
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image: Lindsay Hargrave
Rejection Letters 