Poetry by RC deWinter

                        Lei Han CC



bricks

fireflies are out tonight
              brief flashes of luminescence 
decorating bushes with christmas lights

refusing all thoughts of cold and snow
               i hug warm memories of childhood
close to my chest then am saddened
 
as i recall the innocent slaughter 
               of these jewels in jars
whose hole-punched lids did nothing
               to keep them alive

in hindsight unmixed blessings are rare
               but i hold my memories –
all of them – with no discrimination
               i am built on the lessons of mistakes

​



Fluctuations
                 
Some days I feel bulkier than others, 
though it's unlikely my weight changes awfully much
these carbon copy days.

I put no effort into the fueling of my body,
eating like a wild animal in the midst of famine.
Picking at this, gobbling that.
A diet that would horrify the doctor I haven't seen in a decade. 

Some days my jeans feel snug.
Others they slide down, waistband hanging on hipbones.
Are these changes attributable to caloric intake, 
salt, or some other occult mystery?

I have no way of knowing.
Don't waste much thought wondering.

In the sentience of quiet evenings
the moon knows more about us
than we know about ourselves.    

Perhaps, on nights when I sit illuminated in its aureole 
and the jeans are a tight cloth coffin round my legs, 
that cold rock notices the added ounces and eats them.
Silently, effortlessly, unnoticed.

And, next morning when I wake, the embrace of day
is the waistband hugging my hips. 
A reminder that, once, I was loved.

​

RC deWinter’s poetry is widely anthologized, notably in New York City Haiku (New York Times, February 2017), Cowboys & Cocktails (Brick Street, April 2019), Nature In The Now (Tiny Seed Press, August 2019), Coffin Bell Two (March 2020), in print in 2River, Adelaide, Event, Genre Urban Arts, Gravitas, Kansas City Voices, Meat For Tea: The Valley Review, the minnesota review, Night Picnic Journal, Prairie Schooner, Southword, among others and appears in numerous online literary journals.

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