Poems by Janet Buck

Where I live is beautiful.
Its scenery could sell a book.
We have fresh pears,
lush mountainsides—
an ocean at our fingertips.
Salmon spawn; we smoke
and eat their cherub meat.
A forest always flourishes
in steamy pine like
mints upon a pillow case.
It's pages of a fairy tale,
maps of unmatched luxury.
Somehow boozing soiled it,
kicked our souls beneath a bed
I'm tired of digging slippers from.

You will pry and question me.
"What does flat Ohio have
that Oregon cannot produce?"
I will lie and tell you that I have a job
which pays a weighty sack of gold.
I cannot clear the pus of truth,
rub your nose in what we aren't,
a batch of hugs like hard-boiled eggs
that rolled behind a quiet couch.

Way across the continent
awaits a spray of lilac blooms
where nostrils aren't recovering
from years of plugging ritual.
Dismissal's wind has driven me
to leave the dead, whose pulses
pump and do not own
the color of their crimson blood.
I need the menu of a sun
owning all its scorch and glare,
a livid moon that lets a foot
assail its rock and dig for light.
Where pens aren't pap smears of the dark.
Where wine lists in a restaurant
aren't standing in for Sunday prayers.