Marc Frazier

Marc Frazier is a Chicago-area LGBTQ writer who has widely published poetry in The Spoon River Poetry Review, ACM, Good Men Project, f(r)iction, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Slant, Permafrost, Plainsongs, and Poet Lore et al. He is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for poetry and is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. His three full-length poetry collections are available online. See Marc Frazier Author on Facebook, @marcfrazier45: Twitter.

 

Pasture of Dead Horses

                —title from a phrase in a Donald Hall poem

As a child there was a single horse in a field that would come to the fence to greet us. Someone told us to bring sugar cubes for it so we did—geometric gifts the horse nuzzled from our palms. I never wondered where this horse came from or why there was only one of him or if he served any purpose. I was a child and lived by my senses. I petted the long, graceful slope from his forelock to his muzzle and marveled at the placement of his eyes. If I could have said the word beauty that is what I would have named him. If I had more words then I would have asked what was going to happen to him. I understood the word pasture but not the word dead.

 

 

Elements

               —cento from my poetry collection The Way Here

/Land/
Warm bricks wrapped against the frozen light
In the wings of my hands/heavy grapes
            Tourists look up/goldfish ready for feeding

The embrace of earth/dirt cool on a bulb’s skin/on mine
Anonymous face of an Amish doll/in this country
            now and then/the same

Sough of wildflowers in wind/the fecund tomb of night
Geese fly into formation/wild grasses fade
            nothing I say matters

How alone the moon looks
What happens next is happening
            Have I prayed to the wrong god?

/Water/
            Anything/begins with water: cell, tributary, heart
In the rushes gently rocking/the insects’ hum/a lullaby
I pulled him out of the water

            I am not who you think I am/not who I thought I was/
not who I was meant to be
Currents free seaweed/my palms feel hollow/I send you away

            Sea like the frameless landscape of Illinois
It is I who separates this world from the next
Lanterns, fires dot shoreline/I did not want to let you go

            I leave behind even less than I think
The stars/strung on boats in the canals
A palette of fish filled with light

            There is no one left to love               
I hear orchids grow in wet seclusion
Life, like anything, is a habit

            Can be found almost anywhere, can happen to anyone
Take me as I am
We will leave no trace upon the battered shore