Poetry by Cameron Morse

                      Jeff Ruane CC



Brain Scans


Having a baby is the mousetrap
in me, her cries the tremor
my ear is sprung to, my leaping 
heart, I am so tightly wound. 

Night snow powders the cheeks 
of the lawn, fresh as a newly 
sliced limb, this morning 
of maniacally honking geese, 

bird prints of feet like jet planes 
flying backwards. After my five-year
cancerversary, I decide to drop my brain
scans down one: an annual review. 

Beyond the front stoop, green 
porcupines a white scalp 
of snow. The grass is growing back. 

Chitter, chirr, chitter, cheep!

How grateful I am not to have to
overwinter alone in an empty bird bath. 
Bathe me, instead, with birds.    

​



Go, Dog. Go! 


November twilight, a.k.a.
late afternoon, cirrocumulus float 
at 20,000 feet, salmon
bellied pink above the down sun,
the diffusion of light a sleight
of hand whereby we 
darken in each other’s eyes. 
  
Cirrocumulus 
at sundown, a wingspan 
fanning upward
its corrugated blade of pink
feathers. The air 
darkens us in each other’s eyes. 

Faint pink
intensifies to conflagration. 
Could there be another way for the day
to end than this 
bonfire of our lives 
leaving us daily 
to darken? 

Even my two-year-old 
knows to be sad when the dogs climb   
into their gigantic bed. 
If only we were 
going somewhere with a purpose. 
If only we were going to 
a big tree party. 

​



Seattle


The sky’s blue cupboard is bare. 
I decide to learn the names of clouds, 
photograph the page in my son’s 
Encyclopedia and the sky goes blank, 
forgetting the names of its own children. 

When I decide to glean light 
from the leaves, they close up their shutters. 
Yesterday an inborn diamond, a rainbow 
prism, today a tumbling foreskin. 
There has to be a message 

for us in this, because yesterday we held 
workshop in a coffeehouse that closed. 
We talked line breaks you were always moving, 
you were always moving to Seattle, verdant 
city of your grandchildren. 

My body remembers its hunger, the sad sermon 
of ache, because no one would feed me, 
no one wanted me to live, I lay down 
and buried my face. I lay down and faded 
into the sky’s blue upholstery. 

​

​
Cameron Morse was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6 month life expectancy, he entered the Creative Writing Program at the University of Missouri—Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review and South Dakota Review. His first poetry collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press's 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Baldy (Spartan Press, 2020). He lives with his wife Lili and two children in Blue Springs, Missouri, where he serves as poetry editor for Harbor Review. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.