Constance Brewer

Constance Brewer’s poetry has appeared in Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers, Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop, Harpur Palate, Rappahannock Review, The Nassau Review, and in the New Poets of the American West anthology among other places. Constance is the editor for Gyroscope Review magazine, a contemporary poetry quarterly, and she is also the recipient of a Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship grant in poetry. She is the author of Piccola Poesie: A Nibble of Short Form Poetry. Constance likes Corgis, baseball, and 3 kinds of pie. http://www.constancebrewer.com

Throwing Out the Garbage

You go nowhere, unable to reach as high,
slowing with age and lassitude, more tv, less exercise.
Those winter nights, air with a snap, joints aching
as you scurry to the trash can after dark.
The night sky rivers forever, stars flick Morse
Code through the bare limbs that surround your
house with a net as intricate as any spider web.
The trees lean in as your breath puffs silent comments,
and you limp for the front door, etched with branch
shadows painted by a silver moon, and you reach
into the umbra, search for the doorknob,
arm dappled light and dark as you turn and turn,
unable to open, going nowhere.

Given Wings

We count backwards
on both hands the number of people
who touched us in the past.
The grasp on an arm, pinching slightly
in the guise of friendliness,
wanting to add import to the words
squeezing too hard to make their point.
Behind us, hands rest on
shuddering shoulders. We long to shrug
out like a horse from beneath a rider.
Index finger a harsh jab,
demanding we get our act together,
sometimes in our face, shook
with rage to admonish a transgression
we weren’t even aware we’d made.
The middle finger response to honest
words spilling before thought.
Ring finger with diamond slid on
then taken off in record time.
Pinky swears.
A thumbs up of silent approval.
Clapping for others in hopes someone
will clap for us.
Cupping a lost bird in both palms,
feeling the feathered heart flutter,
feet scrabbling at takeoff,
a cipher flying into the world.