Making Sense of It
There are frogs that break their own bones to form claws,
and lizards that shoot blood from their eyeballs.
This is evidence of something.
So what should we do? Take an odd-but-not-unexpected turn
to the personal, brandishing our jagged little bones?
We could try out other facts. There’s a sea cucumber
that can liquefy itself, twist inside out and eject its guts
to poison enemies. Imagine what we could do with that one.
Tonight a breeze moves through the sidestreet garden,
rustling all the ferns together. Overhead,
a plane continually manages not to fall out of
the sky: an upturned, soupstained bowl of stars.
I’m on a bench by a garden and you’re god-knows-where.
It’s trite, laughable, and actually happening.
In a parking garage two blocks away,
the undergrad dance troupe is banging trashcans for drums,
stomping and shouting and their rhythm
really is impeccable. Wouldn’t you like to be here for that?
J.G. McClure holds an MFA from the University of California – Irvine. His work appears in Gettysburg Review, Green Mountains Review, The Pinch, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. He is the Craft Essay Editor and Assistant Poetry Editor of Cleaver. See more: jgmcclure.weebly.com
