Roger Pfingston

Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He has poems in recent issues of I-70 Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Salt, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and The Flying Island. His latest chapbook, What’s Given, is available from Kattywompus Press.

A Felt Absence

Why does the loss feel greater than a squirrel’s
fatal indecision, or the skunk crazed with lust,
blinded by the lights on a February night?

It was a groundhog undone by fog this morning
as I drove into town, dead-bug pose,
clipped no doubt while standing upright
nibbling a roadside favorite, dandelion or grass.

No, not “a tiny bear with a death wish”—
someone’s bent sense of humor—but a seemingly
friendly creature, thick and furry, two feet long,
who, in a Disney film, might tip his hat and do
a soft shoe before dropping and waddling away.

A few years ago I had one I favored, wanting
to believe distinctly mine, even in a line-up,
a natural risk-taker, staring and eating as I slowed,
hoping others driving up behind would do the same.

When he disappeared, it was a felt absence,
although I still take that side road home on the off
chance he’ll turn up, toeing the asphalt’s edge,
a calm study of a creature playing the odds.

Confirmation

I was in the world last night,
but not…my dreams otherworldly,

far removed until I touched you
as you slept, not wanting to wake you

at 4 a.m., though needing to confirm
six hours ago when we turned

to each other in the dim light
of the clock, kissing and laughing

as my hands held your face the way
you like, the raised window allowing

a June night’s breeze, distant flares
of heat lightning like a soft celebration.

Disagreement

In the far backyard of a January day—
grim, to put a face on it—wind and rain
merge to prune what time has worn
to a tentative hang in the tulip poplar,
twig or leaf, something thicker wedged
upside down in the lower trunk,
the moment quickened when a couple
of crows blur down to a crooked limb,
bill to bill and bobbing like pumpjacks,
their caustic cries like metal ripping free,
so beside themselves not even a hawk
could pause their black fusion as they rise
in tandem, one dropping from the other
to glide, skimming the ground,
the wind a wet wall to burn through.