Poetry by Michael Begnal

Spun


You know how a cat comes around
to say hello, or a racoon,
expressive eyes and hands,
and a deer is a sensitive person--

I met one in the forest out west,
larger than those I’d seen
far off, in the east,
we were feet away, frozen
and scared (each)
but looked into each other’s
eyes, and she knew
I didn’t have a gun--

and I knew the abstruse woof
of her mind,
              spun
                               a skein
                                               unspooled

​


Crimson Clouds


Crimson clouds rot
low on the horizon at solstice,
darken to dry meat and
the black sky

       sheds
                       them--

it is as in the vast
room of many beings,
we enter through the body
of another
and summer a while

observing cracked screens
that deliver us the horrible word

—as daylight perceptibly
shortens, a knitted
humidity disappears, leaving
leaf stains, and then it is
one degree and crimson
clouds clinging
to a cold
                horizon

​

Michael S. Begnal is the author of Future Blues (Salmon Poetry, 2012) and Ancestor Worship (Salmon Poetry, 2007), as well as the chapbook The Muddy Banks (Ghost City Press, 2016). His work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Notre Dame Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Empty Mirror, Public Pool, Thinking Continental: Writing the Planet One Place at a Time (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has an MFA from North Carolina State University.
http://mikebegnal.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/Michael_Begnal

---