3 Poems by Theodore Heil
METICULOUS CALENDAR
I feel I am always
Running in circles
Around a pendulum
Of antiques
Waiting for someone
To say
Hey man
Cool it
Like that time in Greece
With our pants cut off
The morning like steel wool
Against our shorn legs
The once stretch of life
That made me believe
In belonging
At parties
With all the lights
Turned off
We were there
Together
You remember
Walking
The length of our problems
Spooled out
Like pine cones
In the dark moments
MORNING COMMUTE
I’m at the craps table
Seeking unemployment
I wear new shoes
And dress socks
And bet on Total Annihilation—
The thoroughbred race horse
Who pulls the train
The sound of his shrieking
The sound of the gun
Like the past races behind
Us and the future stays put
AM RADIO
On the drive back home, I counted:
four cows, five horses, two riders,
a subway car attached to a trailer,
a yellow field, a mountain.
Past the haze of cow shit and Newports
I counted the silos which swallow
farmers in the mornings after harvest.
I have seen so much
hurt lately, I don’t know if I can go on.
These past days, I lost a lover, attended
a funeral (for a different lover), watched the rain
leave freckles racing on the front window,
opened and shut boxes,
lost so much, will keep losing,
and repeated.
I don’t know how much
of a life that makes.
Still, the farmers keep harvesting grain.
Still, I listen to talk radio in silence.
Still, the field.
Still, the mountain.
Still, my heart clenches
for some long-ago now.
Theodore Heil is the author of Movements (Bottlecap Press). His work has been published in The Colby Review, Amsterdam Review, ONE ART, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.