Two Poems by Maureen Kingston

SOD

I tend to them all spring>>my fragile buds of basement box

& auction fame>>I ply them with practiced hands>>deadhead

their spent glass flames>>unwind ganged vines>>reunite

sockets & plugs>>& when I’ve gathered just the right palette

of bulbs>>red & green>>blue & orange>>I fashion a special strand

>>a rosary of nightlights>>to keep me safe from the blinding bright

of long-lit days>>in the coming weeks I might fiddle some

with draping<<a hook here<<a staple there<<but once

the solstice starts all fiddling ends<<as the south wind blasts

my mood<<as dune & doom become one insurmountable mound

then only the stained-glass glow from my mantel can bring relief

<<its promise of snow & Christmastide a sleight of mind<<a feint

that lets me forget I’m part of the hated five percent<<a squinting

beach leper<<a summer-onset depressive

The Molting Bison at Custer State Park

Shagging, shedding, casting off his old quilt batting

in clumps, bunches, uneven brown tinsel strips,

a thousand bad combovers floating above him

in the spring breeze. He bellows, snorts, paws

the ground, urinates in a rival’s wallow, shakes

his horned helmet in agony, sideswiping boulders,

fences, rubbing the bark off trees. After the storm

he rolls in mud chrism, cooled at last, soothed,

accepting the baptism. And I see my novice self

for the first time, as others must have: the mullet

diction, the ragged iambs—my wild poetic pelt

budding sprouts, itching to come of age.

Maureen Kingston lives and works in eastern Nebraska. She is an assistant editor at The Centrifugal Eye. Her prose and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Bookends Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Gone Lawn, Humber Pie (UK), Lily, The Meadowland Review, Rufous City Review, Stone Highway Review, Terrain.org and Wild Orphan (UK).