Clothespins
in the storm before I couldn’t see I saw a window boarded with a curved
board cut exact
I was learning to see buzzards not as bearers of death but working to bear it
away
now say how lucky with another tone
steaming asparagus the water is tinted from purple in the stalks
Clothespins
I don’t need to sing the song in my head it’s playing anyway
down the street in the sedation known as twilight the lake is a jar in clear
water
fireflies in trees flickering a month later you’ll see it’s dying xmas lights
she made air-quotes with her phone in one hand it changed the song
a good story could be I saw a turtle in the road
Clothespins
paths of desire they call the routes we take across the green our everyday cut-
throughs
the bridge is a single board we walk on it even when the stream is dry
the eternal produces nothing it’s already here I stay awake to confirm it
the trees look natural meaning their branches angle unnaturally we’re
outside now in the dream
outside a blossom it’s still too dark to see
the longest enduring blossom is one style of enduring the first new buds are
another
Clothespins
the child pencils eyelashes on the doll so it might see
pencils them thicker “now she can see at night”
you have to know a lot to know what no knowledge changes and knowing
that much changes, you know, a lot
lullaby: rain falling so fast it dries the clothes on the line
she put my ear plugs under the pillow exactly where I reach
between nothing else and nothing more
to find mercy is
to find mercy in
it means you must have
it means you must have needed to find some mercy there
to find some mercy there
Clothespins
I hoped for another thing
hope became it
it’s no critique of the nest that it fits only its bird
fixed the door by removed it
fixed the faucet by turned off the pump
*
the story went basil sun basil rain basil cat cat cat
Zach Savich’s latest books are the poetry collection Momently (Black Ocean, 2024) and the hybrid critical-dramatic memoir for performance A Field of Telephones (53rd State, 2025). Recent work appears in the Chicago Review, Iowa Review, Georgia Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art.