Speaking In Wings

by Jocko Benoit

Peter Neumann

The raspberries so delicious yesterday are graying. The boy asks me what potential means since so many people use it around him, the way it was once attached to me. Is it better to not lead him on? For him to just be what he wants to be? There’s more potential in the banned collector’s gaming cards I found in the basement’s forgotten realms last night — worth thousands. More than my body and all my poems.

And just then out of the woods comes our cat, pantheresque, gone all Cheshire with a bird clenched in his jaws. He opens his mouth to drop the corpse and before it can fall, it flies away. My heart Rises one rib higher and my mouth Is stopped up with wings.

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Jocko Benoit is the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Real Estate Deals of the Apocalypse. His poetry has appeared in Gargoyle, New Ohio Review, Rattle Poets Respond, Southern Poetry Review, Spillway and many other journals.