Knives
I can offer you only: this world like a knife
—John Berryman
A set of them
in a house is nothing,
where nothing
becomes a meal for us.
We are either kitchen
or crime scene
as our daily recipes
prepare fresh wounds
or silence in rooms.
Words are food
for afterthought.
We plunge sharpness
into leafy artichokes
where the heart lies
between a hairy choke
and grounding stem.
Instructions say
knives are safely used
when you cut away.
Widower
Form as cumulonimbus,
everything goes aerial.
Nothing’s nailed down.
Paint love lost as wind,
mostly watercolors
without showing bones.
No notice is received
before inheriting this farm,
acres seeded with silence.
Most days come wrapped
as broken gifts
or once, a lucky lottery:
cologne left on a shirt,
capable as a movie.
Christopher Wiley is a California poet and playwright. He has published two books of poetry: Some Men and Stillness After Thrashing, a collection of poems written for his late husband. Several of his stage plays have been produced in San Francisco, California; Washington, D.C.; Memphis, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside. He lives in Palm Springs, California under the paw of Olive, his feisty Boston Terrier.