TWO POEMS
ATTENDANCE
every year is happening now, again—
an echo—or on the next page: under the shadow
of your hand, looms scaffolding for the wing
we’ll occupy, the rooms we’ll have run from, soon,
recently—all the numbered blocks are piled, toppling,
today, and later, but I am getting ahead of ourselves,
looking back like this, at the blueprint of a hallway
outside the geometry classroom, a wall we could lean
against to read history, and take notes, recording facts
someone else remembered for us—by autocorrect
you write Lincoln’s assignation; I change your spelling
and wonder if we’re just a series of helixes doubling
particular glitches while toy parachutes are thrown
around our scattered alphabet towers—sometimes
we bruise our feet stepping on them; we’ll trip
over them, probably, once we’re old, and break
things, but now is also earlier, unfolding from when
a teacher presses play on a cassette tape—rewound
each recess—and we know we’re supposed to put
everything up before we leave, before we buy phones
and earbuds and watch kids dig in a sandbox we’ll walk
by on our way to classes we passed, already long-ago,
but to which we keep returning in this collapsed
economy of seasons—as trees grow into fences
and new windows surround us.
POEM CONCEALED AS DEAD DROP
What you can’t say and can’t keep
from saying, must be planted
in a hollow brick, rendered
brief and sewn in the body
of a freeze-dried rat; left
under a lamppost. Any truth
made small enough can hide
in plain sight, can bide its time.
Count your steps or follow
the map written by memory. There.
Now. Here. Any tree will do
for leaving behind a self,
collecting a ghost. They’ve pumped
smoke from the burned house, rebuilt
the library downhill. The mind
is fond of circles, like most animals,
so you might be following the tail
you are trying to lose. Spying
is easier now; everything is digital
—any stone can conceal a signal
waiting to download evidence or send
new orders. Safe encryption, though,
is harder. You can’t even blink,
the analyst says. The poem knows,
but unfolds—see the daffodils, the finches
—like any other any other walk.
Ceridwen Hall is a poet and book coach. She holds a PhD from the University of Utah and is the author of two chapbooks: Automotive (Finishing Line Press) and Excursions (Train Wreck Press). Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Tar River Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, and other journals. You can find her at www.ceridwenhall.com.