Sample Poems by Wendell Hawken

---

New Time


If it all comes true, every bit of it,
every tarot card, queen of clubs, every lightning
bug that ever trudged a life-line
to the high point of a hand,

if space bends, as they say, and gravity is
up for grabs, its force perhaps too strong,
too weak, or as just right as Baby Bear's chair,

if our skies hold history
and every star shine comes from past time
to meet the present eye,
it is possible to wish the wish you wished
tonight on an extinguished star
which may or may not
matter for the wish.

Likewise, if the absence of evidence is,
as they also say, evidence itself
and you had the choice,
even had to choose
the falling back to old time
having tired of the new,
the Ouija answers every question
Yes! and the chicken livers look
propitious in the pot
being boiled for the dogs.

If you walk out a sunrise, orange rising into white,
dogs will leave you to the gravel two-track
having beasts to tree or send to ground
and though you might not see them,
they will you, moving past the grazing cattle
who raise their heads and deem you harmless.
You can watch them think it
as they stand and stare and chew.

---

Following Cloven Meander


Dew-white webs
soon to disappear in
warming.

The pile of
a small meat-eater's
blood-black scat.

White belly hairs
on fence wire's
barbed stars,

and tufts
in mashed shit-stained
grass

tell the night's tale
I do not mind
not knowing.

---

Beware
-The rehabilitation process typically begins in the acute care setting.


Locked doors open with a bleating bell
(rhymes with fell).

So, beware, you walking ones, coming two
by two on assumed feet,

breathing unassisted breaths,
too pink, too tan, too altogether

colorful for this cool gray overhead florescence
where the weather's off-white 68 degrees

and time hangs black-rimmed on the wall,
round with pulsing hands-his cannot move-

a place where everything's on wheels-
the golf cart rolled three times

before it pinned him in the pond-
you who clutch your helpless Mylar and helium,

who hand out soft treats
so the attending ones in white might come

sometimes when you say please
when you call help.

The bitter cup burns your lips, words
never dreamed of knowing, filled overflowing.

You walkers, walk the pale linoleum,
the only path on which the non-anointed

may tread (rhymes with dread)
come to hold

unfeeling hands, speak softly
to the face not too bruised and swollen

not to be
beloved beneath the swelling.

Beware, you who lack badge or bracelet,
those looping tentacles and tubes

measure, measure,
chart and measure

the flowing in and out, graphing
patterns sharp and round.

How shrill their sudden cries:
the language of this cool pale place,

the sibilants that matter.
And here you thought-foolish woman--

you had gotten past the need
to keep him hidden

from sharp yellow teeth
and hungry tongues. Here you thought

you left that horror
back there in the half-grown woods.


**


Which is why
walk is not a word

to use, not when anyone
might hear.

Whisper, if you must
invoke the god

of useful limbs,
limbs obedient

as he was as a child
though you should know

before you ask:
in ancient times

the household gods were
always hardest to appease.

I'm just saying.