Two Poems by Cliff Saunders

Your Green Heart

Come home—you are
loved as the field falls
in love with the distance.

Open the vault of your
dreams and fly through
its fire. Tell everyone

to push blades past their
unaware friends, to sit atop
old oxygen masks, to hold

fall in their own hands
like Sunday supper, to lie
in the street, recovering from

turbulence, to pick up pieces
of your bridge to the playground,
to be autonomous as a face

you’ve seen, to think about loss
while you wait for your heart
to show off shades of green.

Mystery Man

i.

Here’s to my father, the last secret in my life.
My father: the magician in a fishbowl.
My father: the travail at the door, the quarry ghost.


ii.

He sees the world as endless bells, as a nest
casting spells. He gives me a piece of his shadow,
and now it’s too late for seizing the day.


iii.

My dad lies dying. No wonder he looks distracted.
I hold his hand, but now he’s far away, and this time he’s all alone.
What manner of man is he? Why won’t he tell me?

Cliff Saunders is the author of several poetry chapbooks, including Mapping the Asphalt Meadows (Slipstream Publications) and This Candescent World (Runaway Spoon Press). His poems have appeared recently in Atlanta Review, Pedestal Magazine, The Aurorean, Inscape Journal, San Pedro River Review, The Main Street Rag, and Tipton Poetry Journal. He lives in Myrtle Beach, SC.