Two Poems by Charlie Clark

So often little pieces of the bodies stay.

Not just insects or the bleaching

the roadside grasses take,

but actual fur and bone.

That’s just shoddy work to him,

and puzzling, given

the county’s distaste for decay.

He goes out sometimes to scrape the leavings.

Not that it’s much fun for him.

It’s not like he’s saving them for jewelry.

He prefers that drivers see

the clean white lines hashing over black,

the sun and its dead beaming.

That’s what he wants them rushing toward.

Sand he spits his blood into.

Buffed glass. All reflective surfaces.

Light, however weakly he corrals it.

Young men and their enthusiasms.

The way a wooden window slides.

Air, still or moving. Apples, obviously.

But also mango and wild flowers.

Commuter traffic ambulance sirens holler at.

The collected works of Jack London.

Wax museums. The writing on park

benches out in front of them.

Rawhide or any other skin.

The difference between them.

The sight of that gap closing.