Erica Dawson

CONDITION

•  
• If it don’t mean a thing without the swing
• of a gavel, if a trace of doubt can trump
• a circumstance, oh beautiful for skies
• too small. 
•  
•            Today, the paper boasted this—
• Five local policemen tied to the KKK—
• italicized as if to shout, I’m new
•  
• here. When I went outside, thinking I knew
• something of Frost’s birches, that endless swing
• of left to right, the afternoon did trump
• up stillness. Today, I am reading the sky’s
• pastoral. Cumuli passing for this
• creature or that one, stallions, maybe K-
• 9 dogs, maybe the alphabet with K
• then O, maybe this sentence: That kid knew
• he had no business here. 
•  
•                      I find the swing,
• far off, of scales. The winning suit and trump
• card in a game of spades. 
•  
•                        Today, the skies
• are angled sides in the A-frame of this
• big house we built and then forgot. And this
• one cracking rafter, rotting, looks ok 
• for now. But, later, it’s old wood all new
• and gnarled. Later, knots are knees. There’s the swing
• of a young girl’s legs. 
•  
•                       I’m telling Donald Trump,
• today, the story of a woman. How the skies
• came out of her wherever. Spacious skies.
• Dark skies. Grown woman skies. Coalsack at this
• time of the month is deep. That kind-of K
• you see in Crux, that’s her. The bloody new
• moon, her. Mister, you’re going to have to swing
• a huge dick if you’re going to hit it. 
•  
•                              Trump
• came out of triumph. Trump: to play a trump
• on; win a trick.
•  
•                Tonight, I’m running skies
• through my sewing machine, connecting this 
• evening to morning, ironing on K
• for force. I hang it on my windows, new
• and needing blackout shades. 
•  
•                          Tonight, the swing 
• of things. Tonight, 
•  
•                 if any world was new
• ever. If Trump. Ok. If even this.
• If swinging skies were spume preserved in amber. 

ERICA DAWSON is the author of two collections of poetry: The Small Blades Hurt (winner of the 2016 Poets' Prize) and Big-Eyed Afraid (winner of the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize). She is the Director of the University of Tampa's Low-Residency MFA program and an associate professor of English and Writing.