Elliot Robinson
two poems from Return Fire
El Cid
PACKAGE LIQUORS on a pervert’s drive
miss midnight mechanic, the US Marshals
hidden kill kits in the woods outside Vicksburg
our unborn daughter
mixed up with dangerous people
a lost tennis bracelet in the Vicksburg rain
the Yucca Man, the Interstate Sniper
people we’d never met or even seen
clapping when we left the hospital
a green 2006 Suburban
crashed in a ditch by Ergon Refining
piney weed smoke in the morning air
its cypress punkah, its sick strategy of tension
and a Super Flower Blood Moon
seen from the old deer stand
atop the buried benzene gas
in the rainy woods outside Vicksburg
rain off the Magnolia grandiflora
all of it overdetermined
(memories of a Dallas parking lot)
speeding home now, hydroplaning
the roadside slick with glyphosate
Eleusis
in a citrus grove
substation
mole children
split open
when pagan bikers
softly kiss
covered wagon
shining snow
off came
my metal
carapace
God in Heaven hiding from His missteps
charas
stashed
in caryatids
the hotel
indoor pool
destroyed
feeling alienated
the bombings
the wind chimes
broken seedheads
mad marksmen
dark reservoir
compromised
in the sky I saw the guide dog I once was