Five Poems
The beggars—
they stand outside the cafe
comparing cruci-fictions.
___
A summer shower
falls upon the thin roof
of the abbey’s library.
I set my book
down a daydream ago
to watch the foothills soften.
Afternooned eyes
latch onto bookbindings.
Maybe I’ll microwave the coffee.
No, I’ve never
grasped a scenery.
___
The coffee’s stale; the tugboat
is worse.
A deaf image tosses me a promise
of something
more than sweatpant satori.
But a tired world yawns
and I was once called a music lover
and no god is greater
than the sum of her parts.
___
A half moon in late afternoon—
the ear of a god who misses me
who misses you.
___
An almond garden—
Japanese-red beams
of Ohio Valley wood.
In this monastery courtyard,
all things pause for obligatory decades
to be completed by the elm
which rises from the patio.
A bell reverberates the time off
the stone walls.
The sound elapses, falls.
Benjamin Kuzemka is from suburban Chicago and currently resides in Saint Louis, where he is an instructor at a local community college. He spent slightly too long living in Asia and Africa, after which was a vowed member of a religious order for several years. His verse and fiction have appeared online and in print.
