Sample Poems by Beau Boudreaux

The Lit City

Asleep in a mangrove I dream
I built the town out of spit
and newspaper, struck a match to its
outskirts, and let the flames dance in.
The mirror in the park now a black lake
and in it my face looking out, past
the brick red swans deep in smoke, past
the singed grass. A slow wind stirs
bright ashes. It takes the heat into itself,
changes it—the moths, amber throated
hummingbird, dandelion seeds, all blaze
with a scorched sheen. What fire’s
done to me I’ve done to myself:
everything kindled, the luminous grows—
even the coral and anemone sparks,
blooming beneath the black drum of earth.

The Low Chair

Yet do I often warmly burn to see
Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing
And float with them about the summer waters
John Keats

Stranger things have not happened—
this Saturday afternoon nude women

in bay blue shifts enter
the sauna

I slow cook in the corner—
no one notices or seems to care

as the sun swiftly slays
the horizon, it becomes clear

temptation is not the card drawn—
no orgy

rather punishment,
the only movement
beads of sweat
over each pore of my body

I become a seal
my vision goes blurry

the moment I try to gaze
only Hades could hold

me down, panic, dehydration—
the long wish to leave.

After Estrangement

A frigid November
certain moments can be kept sacred

only for so long…in my loft
she dances

wearing only heels—this is not Salome
or Candy on the pole.

She doesn’t look me in the eye—
rather a jardinière on the bookshelf.

It’s my show

I’m a prince on the couch pillows—
wish she had finger tambourines

double joints, a pink boa.

Honesty

My unkempt backyard’s sun-bleached towel
a student helps me spell Turgenev—
seek shelter,
she’s going to change
the world
like a pothole on a side street
sends business to the corner mechanic.
I’ve settled in strange ways—
the wristwatch seems more important,
like a mirror;
my fridge covered in families
the door behind her closes
loneliness is the uncut grass.