A green wig on a willow stump.
Dog’s blood in every catbrier berry.
Trace of moonlight skint from a window.
Rainbow pressed deep into a voice.
The ambassador’s three daughters are
whispering to their youngest brother’s ghost.
The ghost is slanting an ember across
his assassin’s tongue while the assassin
sleeps, childlike, brushing a willow leaf.
The ember swallows almost everything
in the embassy. Someone is trying to awaken.
Light pours out again. Lilacs cluster with smoke.
A small cobra raises its hood against the Zodiac.
Heaven is not shackled to the heat inside its veins.
Clyde lives in Radford, Virginia with his wife Kendall and their son Alan. In 2017, Cedar Creek published his book of poems, Fiddling At Midnight’s Farmhouse, which Kendall illustrated.