Justin Hamm (3 poems)
<Cosmic time, it seems,>
Cosmic time, it seems,
is nearly as wobbly
as musical time is steady.
Maybe this is why we advance
in such uneasy lurches
like those first wagons
propelled by engines
minus mule or horse.
Some of us are deer
and move blithely through
shivering bluegrass,
some proud, imperfect
mathematicians,
some the piston hearts
of young mothers
who tremble as doctors
score our babies’ arms
and insert them
with the infectious pus
during the first few
frightening rounds
of smallpox vaccination.
What our elders knew
hangs low like heavy fruit
in an orchard we mistrust,
or trust too much,
or simply torch--not for heat
but the pure pleasure of fire.
Maybe this is why,
when the serpent unhinges
its jaw and takes in its own tail,
it may or may not be
considered a cannibal.
Gratitude for the Poets
Thank you for the blood of peaches
and the scarecrows boogying in the breeze.
Thank you for taking the time
to polish the face of the moon.
Thank you for your slant rhymes
and your lovely lyric wind chimes.
Thank you for the beers, the coffee,
the warm cookies. Especially the beers.
Thank you, poets, for your postcards
from the inner circles of hell
and for speaking your particular spells
into the shade of death.
Thank you for Wednesday night church
and all fifty-two ways light can fall upon a leaf.
Thank you for the broken pencil tips.
Thank you for teaching me butterflies
have hearts inside their wings.
Thank you for sneakers on city pavement
and for bottling the acid of all
the wars I never had to fight.
Thank you for the mangers in your lips
and the tears in your guitars.
Thank you for knowing. And wondering.
Doubting, suggesting, insisting.
Thank you for your loyal horses
and your dark woods filling with snow.
For your pool sharks shirking school
and the judgment of the midday sun.
For the invisible drums thrumming
beneath your pyrotechnical songs.
For the ten-minute vacations
and the laying on of hands.
Thank you, poets, for giving
love its own language.
Thank you for giving language.
Thank you for giving love.
First Flight: Chicago to Keflavik
At 30,000 feet I photograph the sunset.
Fall asleep and dream of the time
my old man dropped five feet from a ladder
and bounced off the winter-cold concrete
outside our trailer, eyes rolling and white,
low gurgle of panic humming in his throat.
When I wake an hour later to a new sun,
I realize the hum is only the groaning
of the airplane’s engine. Through the clouds
I glimpse pockets of glass-blue sea
six miles down and consider how cold
it must be among the whales and porpoises.
I press closer to you, find that place on your neck,
the scent by which I’d know you if my eyes
turned to ash or my ears sealed with rubble.
Before we left, you spoke of a will; I avoided it.
Now, the first song on my playlist shuffle, Jeff Bridges:
Funny how fallin’ feels like flyin’—for a little while.
I pull my earbuds out, surrender to the engine.
Try to decide if 30,000 feet is high enough
to actually make out the old gods’ laughter.
Justin Hamm's most recent books are The Inheritance: Poems and Photos and Midwestern, a book of photographs. He is the author of two other poetry collections, American Ephemeral and Lessons in Ruin. His poems, stories, photographs, and reviews have appeared in Nimrod, The Midwest Quarterly, Sugar House Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and a host of other publications. Recent work has also been selected for New Poetry from the Midwest (New American Press) and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize from the St. Louis Poetry Center. In 2019, his poem "Goodbye, Sancho Panza" was chosen as part of the curriculum for the World Scholar's Cup. It has been studied by approximately 50,000 students worldwide. In September, the WSC flew Justin to the Philippines to deliver the keynote address for their Manila global round.