Poetry by Robert Hamilton

​​HIC ET UBIQUE
 
It was a life in a small space, a circle
of dissected torsos and radium gum.
Everyone feels compelled to persist
in someone else’s poor decisions.
Astatine chains are enough to hold us.
Anyone can hurt; anyone can ball up
in pain, but do any others wish more than we
to slip the confines and hole up
in some Idaho panhandle of the heart?
Still the verdict holds. Public servals,
sharp-eared, circle us, pawing the dust.
On the shores of the stateless, cold waves
like uniformed men break white on blue.
Cimabue had it less wrong than we; life
is flat, gold-rimmed, and elsewhere.




​
DESERT MODERN
 
Wind through Utah juniper
                                                           ich-laut, ach-laut.
A thumb prints cool ash on my forehead
in a cold cedar box where rose buds dry.
 
A line of cars winds around the basilica
to order through an intercom
the spongy, bone-dry, spider-light
body of Christ
                               with a cup of red wine.
 
In the nave, empty chalices,
                                                          dry throats.
 
They kept you hidden
behind a square of Neutra glass; nevertheless,
a cholla thorn pricked blood from your lip
and wrote on the vellum of your thigh:
 
The wind is a throat

                                        you are its syllable.
​

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Robert Hamilton is a poet and professor living in Texas. His poem "Senso Unico," which appears in Posit, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. Other recent work is in Pøst- and 8 Poems. His chapbook, Heart Trouble, was published by Ghost City in 2018.

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