“Halfway through a coke…”

Halfway through a coke on the mountain
When the doctor rings
Pink-skinned and almond-haired
To remind me “death’s stone is paper thin”
As it pertains to certain debts

Right below the impertinent caprice
Of two cats and three dogs
Playing marauders along the loose fence
Travel may not rescue the pattern of prayer
But is the reason for its province

Since the turn of our golden century
We have longed for that dreary Sunday music,
A pear in bed. Forgo all cracker-
Barrel passions for the clear sinuses of grace
Wheat-whitened skies, plum-ripe grass

Bridges, flags, rolled newspapers
Whose winds carry us
And all our proleptic accountings
Past the crooked vane above our house
Whose porch is gartered with hemlock

A half-acre of windless shadow
Trailing the slate monument above
Colloquies of distant evenings
Dreaming again of their hours of inscription
Hearing the grasshoppers sleep

Her autumn ruins ring around
The mint and citrus at mountain’s foot
Dew becoming the stone feast
Of language legible
To the spider’s tongue

Such fidelity is the thing
Indeed, but fidelity to whom?
Beware lewd goose
Whimsical water-fowl
The sea is modern and unalterable

Nearer still unyellowed by extraction
Our Mother’s thyroid manner
“Protect and possess”
This renaissance of sentiment
This earthen, starless artery of empire

Feast or Famine

Certain graces lack our table.
That nippy glen brings tidings from the lark
Stilled by heat, old Cabernet, gabled
Pheasant stuffed and spiced at dark.
Some distant tenet lays you waste
Along the path to the grassy beach,
Tea fumes and wheat lick my nose and taste
Like a late summer peach,
Like red which melts and washes off a hunch.
Whether you notice or not matters little.
Come play with me on these dunes before lunch,
The waves will be quiet, slow, brittle.
Don’t mind me if I start to bark
As the fish come out from their freedom fable.

Sam Kerbel has been shortlisted for the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize and nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize and 2026 Best of the Net Anthology. His first chapbook, Can't Beat the Price (2025), is available from Bottlecap Press. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Anthropocene, Lana Turner, and South Florida Poetry Journal, among other publications.