2 poems
Inauguration
The sky tonight
in Oklahoma
looks like the sky,
inconsistent
as always. This sky
which looks like
a tree
tonight, looks like
an old oak
collapsing on
some lighter
field of color—
the sky tonight
looks like too many
leaves
funneling down,
a funeral of branches
Inauguration
To say the sky takes
shades of blue
for its own
and keeps them,
that this should require
some new amount
of notice—it feels
too easy or already
overheard, too happened
in somebody else’s body.
But what other
words are there today?
A sign tonight on Highway 51
reads “No Wide Loads,”
“No Wide Loads” and who
has the dignity to pass?
The world seems impossible
and weighted
with old afflictions.
Words, even small
words, catch
in the backs of throats
or come half hatched—
blood with a little egg in it.
Stacy Kidd’s work has appeared in journals including Boston Review, Colorado Review, Columbia, Eleven Eleven, Gulf Coast, and The Iowa Review, among others. She is also the author of two chapbooks: A Man in a Boat in the Summer (Beard of Bees Press) and About Birds (Dancing Girl Press).