I only recognize people in context.
The mail carrier, in his work
blues, exists most nights on
my porch, a word and a smile.
He greets me a stranger
at the market, dressed in denim,
holding a package of flushed strawberries.
My thoughts scramble at his familiarity.
A patient out of her room, I look
for clues: jewelry, wounds, her stroke-
pasted smile. She doesn’t remember
I’ve asked her name twice this week
already. Time scrubbed the dark
lines into something shapeless.
Like the faded coffee stain on our
white rug. The one we argued over then
made love on the first night. Or, how
your eyes are lighter than I remember.
Your worry lines deeper. How every sorry
is closer, now, to goodbye.
Apple Pie
I walked past the house
today. You live in the back
room now where I kept my
resentment in glass jars.
Hidden for years. Ripening.
They’re yours now. Yours
to open, to break, to give
to our children. Once, we
could have planted them
in the back yard, picked the
fruit, and shared a meal
together.
Haiku for the end of my marriage
Wedding ring
lines fade softly.
An ellipses.
Nastalgia
I've learned a few ways to find it. The quickest is a drink, but the reception is shit. Delayed static. Always off just enough to know. The best is a song. If you find the right one, you're almost there. Just outside the dirty window. I see myself under the revival tent, watching Grandma offer a love song to Jesus. Her voice almost a whisper, just above the drunk auto-harp. Lulling it to speak with plastic fingertips, every string another word she could never say aloud. I took the hymnal off your bedside table, flipped through brittle pages, each now titled "I miss you."
Listening to Phoebe Bridgers, Driving Home
January night, and I left
my coat at work. The heater
comes in starts and fits,
but your voice is whiskey
warm. My first
cigarette in ten years.
Nearly home to my wife
and kids, but not before
I'm seventeen and broken
again. Before love and antidepressants. Before
I had to think about
what I wrote. When it was
just blood on the brain.
Haiku (1/21/2023)
My aging father.
Still a young man
in my reflection.
Haiku (1/11/2023)
Grandma's room. Bereaved dog licks my girl's hand, and we're together again.
Haiku (1/10/2023)
Kissing my son's cheek.
A fresh coat of peanut butter
and jelly lipstick.
Haiku (1/9/2023)
Dirty rain.
Distracted, God pours
out an old cup of coffee.
Muse
Conjured once again,
she lies in an exhausted
heap of cream linen and
feathers on my kitchen floor.
I wait, impatiently, while
she peels off anonother piece
of vellum skin. Ignoring her
frantic screams, I place
my inkwell beneath the
crimson fountain, pluck
a quill from eider wings,
and write.
Jon Humphreys Poetry 