Truck June 2015: Two Poems by Le Hinton

Everything Reminds Me of Jazz

I like little things. The tiny and irrelevant. A diminished

7th at a rock concert.  An earwig mothering

eggs into a world that wishes

them harm. I feel sorry for Pluto (dismissed

from the adults' table) crying in his cranberries,

exercising in his room, struggling to grow.

What use are grace notes of cellophane

tape lost among shards of wrapping paper?

The old man hoarding blue pills, hoping for a reason

to swallow them. The brief prayer on the lips of an atheist.

An empty ring box from another failed

marriage. Thrown rice that were never seeds.

No PR's needed for the small and consequential,

the virus conspiracies, the petite

cancer cells (armed with daggers) waiting

in dark alleys of the body. All of them stars

of this week's show.

Where are the headlines when a heartbeat

goes missing? No pinprick of blue or improvised

rhythm. Only a bass thump, a snare snap.

A small call, an even smaller response. 

Measures and measures with nothing to play. 

***

The Last Nights of Ecstasy

At McDonald's, a young boy asks a blind lady

if she is afraid of the dark. I only believe

in things I can't see, like my white cane or next week.

In the midst of their love affair,

a couple never unbuttons the middle

of the night, never trusts its moist conversation.

The blind lady asks the boy

if furniture moves when no one is looking.

Then asks him the color of his cane.

***

Le Hinton is the author of five poetry collections, including The Language of Moisture and Light (Iris G. Press, 2014). His work has been widely published and can be found in The Best American Poetry 2014, Little Patuxent Review, the Baltimore Review, and outside Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, incorporated into Derek Parker's sculpture Common Thread.