TWO POEMS

M.K.W. Belant 

Mercenary Chauffer

The Stampede Trail is where they found him.

Dioxin was the least of it,
and all the cotton candy, spun like polyester, that
he’d eaten at the fair.

No questions followed on his absence, no
comments on his blogs, all yellow, pink and blue.
Potatoes, bland disguise for poison, did him in.

Beyond the end, the path disappears into tundra
brush and willow, a vacancy sign flicks red,
then orange, then red again.

A mercenary walks the fence alone
heavy as summer with his armor and guns;
blood, like nitrates, soaking the soil from his boots.

The elders gather there, with hair so white,
every kiss, now, a pollution –
a cancer that will kill you over time.

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What anybody knows

She keeps some money separate as the bullets in his gun,
each chamber smooth and silent.
When he paces in the night, one hand raises the roof.

The other sticks it to her through a pocket in his robe, striped
like Jacob’s amazing technicolored dream coat
and what she used to think puddles on the floor

like so much stock in a falling market, like stock
replies to standard questions:
I bumped the door, tripped on toys, the chair was weak and broke.

The baby’s sleep is heavy, whisky milk around pursed
lips, and while he rants the night to morning she
conjures the hard coming of his sleep, the slice of time

that eases off his arm, relaxed enough to let her slip away.
Three backpacks wait below the stairs, closeted with oiled
doors and quiet shoes, smooth from dancing.

She folds the children into car seats, buckles
at the knees to hear him calling on the porch, wait,
and no one could prove it in the end

the snow to muffle anybody’s cries, with
bluebottles under wispy country light, a
vacant yard where grass, unmowed, will go to seed.

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