Two Poems by Donna Vorreyer

"Ornament of Grammar--Allium Primitive," by Alicia LaChance

TWO POEMS
by Donna Vorreyer

Salvage

We pick through the rubble under the pier:
a tangled net, a towline, an amber
bottle half-buried in silt and seaweed.
All can be of use: the line to pull clear

of quicksand, the net for trapping
minnows, the glass as tool or weapon.
You present a bouquet of reeds gathered
with a bow of old balloons, flourish it

with a grin.  In these circumstances,
it will suffice. Your eyes a mansion.
This raft a ferry. Some small god dances
at the window, ticking off all our sins.

 
How to Explain This Emptiness

An overpass, deserted, looming over dust
and yellow wildflowers latticed by dirt.

A freight train snaking in the distance, all tankers,
fluids bound and bordered by rust.

A dilapidated church, its crossbeams split open,
releasing an undulate parabola of swallows.

The holy in what is not whole, the music
in the silence, another life thrown into this thresher.

The harsh twang of steel guitar like a death cry,
like a baby’s wail. An unsteady hand suturing the wound.






***
Donna Vorreyer resides in the Chicago area and is the author of A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013) as well as six chapbooks, most recently Encantado, a collaboration with artist Matt Kish (Red Bird Chapbooks). Her second collection Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in late 2015. Visit her blog here, or find her on Twitter here.

[Image above by Alicia LaChance]