3 Poems

By Thomas Zimmerman. Published on April 4, 2023.

Richard’s Bones

                                          Bones Under Parking Lot Belonged to Richard III

                                          The New York Times, February 4, 2013

Discovery of Richard’s bones below

that Leicester parking lot has made me think

about my own: A tuneless violin

within a battered case? A stand of pines

on fire in Wyoming? Scabs of snow

along I-94 as night turns pink?

To kill a king as sacrificial sin—

to plump the ears of wheat, to feed the vines,

to purge the plague—necessitates a myth

that comforts us, that renders Bosworth Field

Elysian: we must rise from death. And with

these thoughts I read myself to dreams each night:

sleep’s darker sister might arrive, a slight

sting in her kiss, then all my ills die, healed.

Let’s Call It

The last day of the world, a time to count

mixed blessings. Guilt and resolutions mount.

A lone voice in an empty room. Most thought

is this. God, too, the way the elders taught.

No, wait. The room is not so empty: there,

in shadow, bare as doubt, a wooden chair.

The floor’s scrubbed clean, the window has no shade.

The muse is worried: “Where’s the mess you made?”

Raindrops meander down the pane, like streams

that feed the rivers, and the tears, of dreams.

Let’s call it “World’s-End Sonnet No. 1”:

the breeze has calmed, the rain is almost done.

Things pass . . . into the past . . . to disappear.

Memory reconstructs them, drags them here.

Confluence

A pint of stout in front of me and Bruckner

in my ear. Today the sunshine broke

a string of seven days of ashen clouds.

Imagine inspiration, sense its old

confluence: energy, materials,

and time. Sublime symphonic slabs of sound.

And it’s a crossroads too: the witch

in me that dallies there casts shadow—

but the spells will come. And in my mind’s eye,

Trey and I—black dog, white man—are toiling

up a path that forks, a gleaming sunbeam

—no, a bolt of lightning—overhead.

Thomas Zimmerman (he/him) teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Big Windows Review https://thebigwindowsreview.com/ at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His poems have appeared recently in dadakuku, Sage Cigarettes, and The Unconventional Courier. His latest book is the poetry chapbook The House of Cerberus (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). Website: https:/thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com | Twitter: @bwr_tom | Instagram: tzman2012.