Clark A. Pomerleau

every day, they became part of him

(listen to the poem, read by the author)

The sight of buds
unfurled day after day
until he saw them at night
flashes on his eyelid screen
real as soft petals

The tang of apples
swelled his cheeks
and belly
made him glean more
and wait for top picks to fall

The crunch of leaves
entered him
sound waves
reverberated through his soles
splashed in his ears

The smell of pine
wafted molecules
blended and changed places
with him
until he huffed sprigs daily

The man beside him
shaped him
gave him himself
walked away and back to her
and “every day, they became part of him.”1

Footnote

  1. The last line comes from Walt Whitman, “There was a Child went Forth,” The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman (Ware, Hertfordshire, England: Wordsworth Poetry Library, 1995), 274.

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Chants all over

(listen to the poem, read by the author)

Heroific is the ant
and worker bee
crocus and crab apple tree
the Everyman
in me

The mockingbird
chants so complicated
then dive bombs
women walking dogs
’til sinful thoughts arise
of strangling songbirds

You can find the key
of cat’s meow
on the piano
or guitar string
plucked to choke the chicken

When waves of peeper trills
subside
they go gently
and the pond is still
for what? everything to come

Rest your head on me
involuntary murmurs
lull us
rocked on their waves
to sleep

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About the Author

Clark A. Pomerleau is a writer and teacher from Washington State who is excited to share Walt Whitman-inspired poems with Wordgathering readers. Memory, nature, queer aesthetic, and transformative agency feature in his work. His poems also appear in Peculiar: a queer literary journal, at Poached Hare, and at Coffin Bell Journal. Pomerleau’s first poetry chapbook, Better Living through Cats, comes out with Finishing Line Press in January 2021. His essays and scholarly book (Califia Women, 2013) historicize feminist diversity education, feminist views on sexuality, and trans-inclusive praxis.