8.1 Spring/Summer 2010

Evan Beaty The Thaw

Another tumbledown tatterdemalion
winter, its coat gone raw. Broken rosary
of salt over all our roads. I am closer
to crow than anything, have availed
myself of the tooth-cracking feast
laid out by February. February’s gone.
Today I slept through the sun
and the hours of the sun. Tonight I greet,
in place of sleep, faces I weave
from sheet-thread, clear sight, and the slow
ache of clocks: my face, near-crow;
your face, cut-boned, lovely. At dawn I leave
my house, stand in new grass and light.
Sometimes the thaw arrives at night.
 


 
Evan Beaty received his MFA from the University of Virginia in 2009. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Review, Cave Wall, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere.