Three Locusts

by Dustin Sipes

​

Weathered planks beneath bare feet, waterside.

Trees’ faces silhouetted

against 11:39-shaded purple-black. Chest

bare to the night, stand alone song:

Watch, spirits, prophets - watch.

 

They are nature’s impartial

grandfathers; threefold

sentinels, watching generations

pass their parade beneath a thousand blossom-white eyes.

Whisper, spirits, watchers - whisper.

 

In the air, chlorine moon,

I feel the sun’s burn slide off of my shoulder

beneath fingertips; mine? Yes,

whispers truth. Know,

whisper the prophets.

 

I choose the locust truth,

swallowing real. I choose

to fall asleep in my room with no walls

and awaken in the dead-sun morning

healed.

Know,

whisper the watchers: know better.

​

I know my father

will reprimand me if I am found out here

in the drowning night -

these spaces are no longer his, any more

than the reflection of a son in the pool

of his eyes is mine.

 

I know my arm

sare light with goosebumps; and feathers

are heavier when wet, but the water is as deep as the sky,

and a burgeoning something –

a wing? a scream? –

aches to burst from every pore.

 

I know the wind

has the vigor of a river and sorrow

enough to make the treetops speak –

syllable by syllable, leaves ripple a liquid

eardrum that hears only muffled distance. Palms like bark,

I make waves and envy it.

Know, whisper the prophets:

know better.

My hands are better suited for hammers

than hearts – see them? My feet have grown roots,

so I close one eye and reach

outward – am I touching now?

​

Know, whisper the watchers:

know better.

Is flying, then, the same as being sad –

in the sense that I am allowed to do neither?

There are feathers in the water, but they are not mine –

nothing waits in my skin, I think, but thorns.

 

Know, whisper the prophets:

know better.

They have watched my father,

too – proud, like his mother's mother. Like her,

he will pretend not to notice

things drowning.

 

My god is three half-dead tree

son my great-grandmother's former half-acre.

My hands are floating in a backyard pool. I smell chlorine

as they trace red, and white

tank-top lines to nestle under nervous armpits.

I shiver, and feel foolish.

 

Whisper, spirits, watchers – whisper.

In my room without walls, maybe I will hear you

muffled through the heavy glass window

with the rusted latch

above the brown paper of Johns Manville-brand fiberglass insulation.

 

Watch, spirits, prophets – watch.

See the boy who wrote poems in the dark

by the pool succumb

to Seroquel sleep, your voices

subsumed. To him,

it likely resembles being underwater.