C. Hiatt O'Connor

Bio: C. Hiatt O’Connor has received multiple honors for his poetry, including The Miriam T. and Jude M. Pfister Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His work is published or forthcoming in Apricity Press, the Banyan Review, Blueline, The Academy of American Poets (poets.org), deLuge Literary and Arts Journal, The Dewdrop, ERGON, GRIFFEL, High Shelf Press, Lucky Jefferson, and more. Currently a poetry reader for the Adroit Journal, he lives and writes on a Maryland farm.

IMPOTENCE

I spend the afternoon cleaving ground,picking, hoeing, spading, tryingto resettle erosion’sreorganization. Rains have gougedthe field, revealedthe hideaway of age-faded Big Gulps and rust-rotten ironworks, made a dam of the low-field fencewith washout. Now it is my day’s duty to actas crude water: to denythe will of cloud and slope, to shoves stones asidewithout asking, to enter earthwithout patience, breaking itone thrust at a time.

MAGNETISM

Supposedly there are unseen themes we all take part inbut we’re given up by our hands, by dark glasses.
 Reach arm deep down the sink and smell wet carpet, turn on the faucet and taste nothing of the wellspring.
Currents are felt only after their opposites. We tryto step beside, move up or down a few stairs,
 though to come to sight now, born blind by perception, might be too much to bear. Supposedly
we are animals of will, altogether desire, butwe may well be stalks of seaweed, salted and blithe.
 The iron in our blood can’t escape the magnetism of convention. We try, but always end up choking
on bread, or wine.

ELEGY FOR ELEGIES

With a line from Roman Elegies II by Joseph Brodsky Each morning there could be bright-throated birdsbut the painted anchors sing instead
their flat songson the exponentiality of dread.
Each afternoon we could be crouchedto press our heads against the hollow trunksso to hear honeybees thrum
but they have forgottenthe topography of their hives.
Each evening we could watch the far borderbrush green shoulders with the moon
but that quickening music festers insteadin the fungal folds of our mind –
like all else our sense is eaten up.Whatever’s left, entrancedby our circling around the maypole,
each dizzier passtightening the ropes.

PRESENCE

alone again on the slope crest with a bellyful of smoke
throatful airful – sway on my feet sways a thousand nameless trees overhead starlings murmur
s s h h h s s h h h roost and become leaves firm earth presses up underneath something inward presses outward what’s the use

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