Two Images of Oblivion
 
An underdeveloped plot with poor drainage
Evenings we take the wheelchair around the apartments
Each orbit a pause to view birds in standing pools of water
A mated pair of tree ducks, otherwise grackles
The male’s double-voiced pond song, then a dance
Sometimes a night heron
Years ago housing projects filled the plot
Before that, shacks of the Baptist settlement
No running water, a bronze pump, a lion on top
Plot where memory has no prior referent
Shallow flood of nothing
Yet a place all the same, like heaven or earth
The close of a nightly bedtime story
It always ended at the bottom of a hill
One rolled so fast he turned into hot butter
In the forest, buttered toast for all
BIO
http://www.peterstreckfus.com

Peter Streckfus is the author of two poetry books: Errings, winner of Fordham University Press’s 2013 POL Editor’s Prize, and The Cuckoo, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2003. His poems appear in journals such as Chicago Review, The New Republic, Seattle Review, and Slate. He lives in the Washington DC area with his wife, poet and translator Heather Green, and is on the faculty of the Creative Writing Program at George Mason University.

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