Robert Lowes

Poetry 
by 
Robert Lowes

THE UNITY OF THE PARAGRAPH

The topic of this paragraph is the need for one topic per paragraph. This paragraph, therefore, snubs the following paragraph and its topic.

Equally xenophobic, this paragraph vows not to compromise itself with a transition sentence that refers to the preceding paragraph. This paragraph is sufficient unto itself, a loner who eats pork and beans from the can in a studio apartment.

This paragraph is a prison. Its one subject, dressed in khaki, leans against a twenty-foot limestone wall and sighs.

This paragraph is a tombstone bearing a name. A row of tombstones is a chapter. A cemetery of tombstones is a book. Lay down your flowers and walk away.

This paragraph is an eye focused on an oak tree. It won’t focus on the mountain lion in the tree, ready to leap, or the black ants wandering in the canyons of bark.

This paragraph is monotheistic. It destroys all false topics in the fire of its devotion. This paragraph has spoken.

This paragraph is about technicalities. At the very least, you must indent. The first row of words must be shoved over several spaces. The essence of a paragraph is a little violence. Otherwise, you can say as little or as much as you’d like.

This paragraph is willing to die for unity. If a paragraph is divided, how can husband and wife cohere? How can atomic nuclei continue to hug themselves? If a paragraph doesn't develop its topic sentence with supporting details, can anyone believe in God?

This paragraph laughs at other paragraphs for being so earnest and disciplined about topic sentences. The laughter spreads like a poisonous gas, killing anyone who craves literary praise.

This paragraph wars against itself. The second sentence wants to expel the first, branding it racially impure. The third sentence has sought political reform for some time. While collecting signatures in the plaza, the fourth sentence is shot by a sniper. The fifth sentence reloads.

This paragraph collapses. Some sentences hit the ground like cats on all fours, others like children who fall out of trees and break an arm, or a neck. A doctor arrives and does what he can for the living.

This paragraph disintegrates. Some sentences meander into a forest and are never seen again. Other sentences build a town on the outskirts of the forest, which supplies lumber for houses and furniture. But what about the voices coming from the forest at midnight? 

This paragraph believes it’s successful because it consists of only one sentence, giving it self-evident unity.

This paragraph is about one-upmanship, because it’s a shorter sentence.

This paragraph gloats.

Paragraph.

DEEP SPACE PHOTO

Someone out there must be having fun,
tossing endless galaxies across
the velvet black like incandescent Frisbees,
or spinning them like pinwheels. Our own
Milky Way is a spinner, though I can’t tell
from where I sit, suited and tied and thumbing
through a book in a sunless waiting room,
so much riding on an interview, so still.

My finger traces the swirling in this photo,
hoping to catch its motion until I’m daddy’s
little boy on a merry-go-round of stars.
I need the distance of ten billion light years
to see the turn of events without self-pity,
feel the push at my back, the letting go.

THAT GOOD NIGHT

Like dropouts from the outlines
of bear, crab, and hunter,
the meteors dropped into
our dark green realm.

We sat in the meadow,
heads craned up for the streakings,
the short-lived light,
and I thought, Welcome to Earth.

Minutes before, we had seen a deer
pausing at the roadside,
and some distance away, a fox
was training his eyes on him—

too large a prey for the fox,
but not for his instincts.
And we had seen a possum
standing in the road, dazed,

bleeding from the mouth.
When we left the meadow,
he was still on his feet
in a circle of blood drops.

I aimed a flashlight at him.
His eyes glinted back.

I wondered how long he’d keep
his watch on our pelted planet,

where the lights go out,
and all manner of life
searches in the darkness,
whatever the cost.

 

MOUSETRAP MEDITATION

The eyes were wide open
and bulging, as if the creature
had been jolted
into supreme alertness,

and the head was held in place
so he couldn’t turn away
from whatever he saw.
I admired the art

of this surprise ending,
as good as a couplet
snapping shut a sonnet
on the dangers of desire:

the sweet caramel,
the broken neck.

WAKE-UP CALL

Poor Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody,
says the white-throated sparrow

in folk translation, its song quavering
and thin as a letter that might be slid

beneath my bedroom door,
telling me to wake up to the day’s

allotted favors, enough to stymie
leaping cats and diving hawks.

Just a taste. A few berries from the bush.
A few seeds on the tongue.

A lean song, robbed of the robin’s
lushness, the mockingbird’s verve,

calling me to join the Peabodies,
to sit up in bed, one more time, and whistle.