Roadside Table

By Connie Dover

Handing off red bandanas,
I play capture the flag
with a grinning Arapaho road crew
in the Wind River Canyon

Rims and lips and arches
make me wild,
and my love’s tongue

Maddened bees
work hard little buds
along the Bighorn

A full and transparent moon
is pulled up through the clouds
past Debussy
past the Black Lodge Singers
and tales from desert prisons

Coyote, loping through the cottonwoods
turns and crouches toward me, flinching
He whispers without words

“The only way to conjoin
with this awful beauty
is to wander waist-deep among the sage
into the eye of the sun
and fall upon your sword.”

Holiday TV Special Blues

By Will Leathem

The streetlights all begin to blink,
as the tomcats scurry home
to purr and rub up against familiar legs.

… and the autos begin their scramble
as the neighborhood starts to nod,
and the desperate final cadences
play out in the corner bars.

It smell of snow and fireplaces;
and the mice, they scamper
between the walls.

… and the solitary lovers
curl up in front of televisions,
pull close their comforters
and hang on with white knuckles
to the clickers that serve as travel agents
for those too tired to love.

— Connie Dover and Will Leathem will read at 8 p.m. Friday in the second installment of the Lawrence Poetry Series at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H.