POSSESSED
By Christopher Locke
ISBN 1-59948-011-5
Poetry chapbook, 40 pages, $7This title was selected for publication as a result of entering the MSR Annual Chapbook Contest.
I was seven and watched
my neighbor heave about in strange
languages, gnashing small bits
of air, his hair lip vibrating
as his entire body went
crazy-electric. The parishioner
raised his blond hands and
the congregation followed, creating
a field of waving sunflowers
like the ones I saw in my mother’s
books about Spain on those rare
moments I sneaked away from
my room and the task of learning
every psalm in the Bible.
Sing louder to drive out Jim’s demons!
the parishioner yelled, but Jim was louder
than all of us, until he collapsed
in a froth between the pews and
was hauled out back, not seen again
until he repeated the whole mess
the following Sunday.His terrible voice once invaded
my sleep, my brother and I
waking to Jim’s thick
screams; we crept to the stairs
and watched him writhe on
the hardwood floor until he was
spent and defused. My father and other
church-men encircled him like hunters
around a steaming buck. My brother
and I could only peer gaping
between the banister’s thin bars.But we were never safe, even
after moving to the new house,
escaping our church, my parents
on the brink of divorce. Dishes crashed
unexplained from a high shelf, and
my father said the house was unclean.
He moved from room to room, exalting
the Lord, spittle-mouthed and shaking,
because something unholy was eager
to ravish our souls, devour us.
I said my prayers each night until
the cold sweats came back and pipes
started banging in the cellar; I lay
motionless in bed convinced my next
breath would not be my own.So now, how can I find such bliss
in pushing my daughter on her swing,
her screams infectious and sweet
as the June day we breathe—nothing
sinister waiting for us, no shadow
drooling behind a hedge. She swings
feet first towards heaven and I think,
how easily I could have become
one of them, enraptured, moving
slowly towards a man twisted
on the floor, all of us possessed
by the belief we could save him.
Desire
—after Wim Wenders
Berlin is thick with ruin,
and the angel is expected
to be less than a shadow, to stare
down impotent at all their crying
out, their replays in a great
theater of loss. Shaking rain
from his wings, he settles
into a library, everyone sitting,
or standing between the orderly
shelves. He leans close, their thoughts
smashing like waves against desire —
the sorrow of it.And that’s when he notices
her, a woman, the light
of her face glowing above
an open book; the angel sees
what he can not have: the slow
rapture of one heart into another.
She sighs and shifts her head,
and he wants to touch the fortress
of her wanting, the mere breath
of it. He feels his wings
detach, and she turns slightly,
unsure, a weight, (something
like sweetness), at her shoulder.
Still Life With Heat Wave
Shadows collapse into fever
as night twists around you
like a dishrag.It’s two a.m.
Naked, you stand by a breathless
window and think about cold mountain
lakes and how you once snowshoed
beneath an icy fishnet of stars.But relief is impossible now,
even as the wind picks up
and swirls across your darkened
lawn and through the birches, the leaves
clicking like soft castanets.You can not translate
these desires as clearly
as you could not translate
your father’s, two days since
he died confessing the wrong
crimes in your ear, fingertips
brittle against your shoulders,
and you amazed that you
could not forgive him,
his loneliness a thousand suns.
Christopher Locke was born in Laconia, NH. He received his MFA from Goddard College. His poems and prose have appeared in over 85 publications around the world, including The Literary Review, The Southeast Review, Poetry, Connecticut Review, West Branch, Exquisite Corpse, The Sun, Tears in the Fence, (U.K.), Descant, (Canada), The Chattahoochee Review, and on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Chris has received several awards including grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain) and OBRAS Artist Center (Portugal). He was a Finalist for the Salmon Run Press National Poetry Book Award, the New Issues Press Poetry Prize, the Robert Penn Warren Award, and Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Competition. His previous two chapbook of poems are Slipping Under Diamond Light, (Clamp Down Press—2002), and How To Burn, (Adastra Press—1995). Chris is the Academic Director at Shortridge Academy, a school for troubled teens in Milton, NH.
