Poetry by LE Francis

​


​under the sun

She says, same, to the wind that plays
the spine of
                 the fence-line,
the hedge that
                 moans along with
the crows who
                 will soon abandon it
for a crimped metal roof.

Literacy before the storm that speaks of
streamers of siren
                 shredded by wind &
the pressure
                 bottoming out in your
head like a plug
                 had been pulled.
There was a song she once heard

about a hitchhiker in a storm & it sounded
like fatalism &
                 so was this. Then
there was a time when
                 she stood in the rain &
realized the drops were
                 as big as her palms &
when she raised her hands,
                 she felt like a priestess
twisting a knife in the back of
some ancient god whispering,
                                                    “cry, now.”

But she once loved a man with a beard like
Zeus, white as bone, &
      so she was moved to grief
in her listening &
      when she heard the halting
hum of your voice like
      the wind playing the planks
she remembered again &
     another slant sound spun webs
in her shadows.

You say there’s nothing new and maybe you’re right
yet for every ear that hears the same song and knows nothing
there are as many building empires with the crows & the rain
& the same song transposed into stories they’re waiting to tell.




Study of a thing

A thing as a heaviness,
dense as the heart of a
galaxy & deadlier than
a window propped open
to let the void in.

Spun from fiber
to thread & then
woven; each string
clinging to the next,
& I can’t unravel it.

A thing as a bodysuit
as a lead-tip neuron;
a thing as an elegance,
implied purity in cloth
too dark to stain.

Seam in a nebula,
as container of a
thing that my
language has
blown to hell,
& I can’t rebuild.

My heart as a sword,
with its many sharp
surfaces & my blood
as needles which tap
through wide pipe veins,
a study of a thing that

may be nothing
now, & certainly
will end the same.




Stupid flowers

-inspired by "Plateful of our Dead"
by Protest the Hero


Recoil & discharge, another
       seed to the soil.
It's the way we honor
       our mothers: be always
reloading; be ever
       willing to massage
the trigger as if
       it were a poem aimed
at our ideal love; be
       always sleeping, dreaming
up mechanisms for defense,
       for offense, for the
rhythm that moves our
       prayers underground:
Seed to soil.

So, here's to our
world without,
here's to the
solutions which
answer to no one,
& the gardens we
plant without ever
intending to see
spring.​



Bio: LE Francis is a multiple medium procrastinator writing from the shadows of the Washington Cascades. Find her online at nocturnical.com.