Kevin Clark
THE GONE
Atmospheric rivers missile the roof.
Reports of a cousin’s skirmish,
Her certain end. No one can face
The fact of it. Too young, too there.
A fish kill blots the river. The dog
Listing, then becoming the grass.
A colleague checks into the hospital,
Recovers for a day. Then—
Soon, water grays sleep. In mis-
spelled texts, your high school pal
Can’t remember the trip you took
Last week, the plans you’d made.
Cell calls stopper his mailbox.
Outside, soaked ground coughs
For air. Again, the siren ring
Of your phone, your brother shoring
His breath: A growth, he chokes,
Deep in his back. Then, our pause—
The season floods, its halothane fog.
You hold your brother’s filmy hand,
A wraith in your palm. Time loops,
A transparent scarf muffling thought.
You’re told months have passed.
In the window, rain, sun, rumor.
—The gone deploy like sinkholes.
Kevin Clark’s third volume of poems The Consecrations is published by Stephen F. Austin University Press. His second book Self-Portrait with Expletives won the Pleiades Press prize. Kevin’s poetry appears in the Georgia, Southern, and Iowa reviews, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Gulf Coast, Copper Nickel, etc. A former critic for The Georgia Review, he’s published essays in The Southern Review, Papers on Language and Literature, and Contemporary Literary Criticism. His website is: kevinclarkpoetry.com.