Lacunae
The road back
was the straight
and the six-lane wide
and the unending even
at the skyline. The exit
was ceremonial; to pass on
not an option. To stay
was to be wreathed at the shoulder
with flowers that would not die,
become the sign. All of my time
had been lost to traveling, the stenosis
of sameness of pavement
and mile markers collapsing again
to one. I found my way home by feeling
alone. It was an exercise
in excision; forgetting myself
surrounded, trimming the faces
from photographs. That years
could bleed from the central
canals and the missing
go unreported was far from
a realization. The golden hour
was still golden if the day ever
did die. That it was more potent
for the pollution made no difference
in photographs, would not blind
the freshly faceless or draw
my memory from the scissors.
In memoriam I knew
what was real and what
wished. I deadheaded the living
and let plastic bouquets melt
to the pavement, permanent.
Wilded
I wanted to remain unread
but he probed both palms together,
joined as they were at the cuffs.
Had I been concerned
with husbandry, or coveting
only the wild ones? Could I forgive
myself for forgetting the lab
rats, the poultry, all animals
named for meat? There is no way
to throw the scent of this. At the edge
of my haunt I had freed passerines,
rabbits, ruminants. They never really
got away. I felt the fleshing,
the skinner finishing at the neck.
I hadn’t heard of the pigs then,
escaped sprouting tusks
within months, all fences breeding
ferality. Now nightly I dream myself
locked in and losing all my teeth
before I can find the hole
in the loop. I won’t call that
prophecy. What else will sever
at the end of this tether?
What has hostility dressed
from my memory? Wager I won’t
be handled again, beast
I could become. Bet I won’t
be foreseen. By then I’ll forgive even
blood on the breeze, and no one
will be able to classify me.
Christine Barkley (she/her) is an Irish-American writer, the Associate Poetry Editor of The Dodge, and a reader for TriQuarterly. Her poems and essays can be found in The Journal, Yale Review, Massachusetts Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Manhattan Review, Poet Lore, Portland Review, and Missouri Review, among others. She is a 2025 Oregon Literary Fellow, and has received support from Literary Arts.