It’s been a while since we’ve had a featured poem on our blog, so what better time than today, with the release our newest issue right around the corner? Today’s featured poem is from Volume 15 of Five Points, “A Man’s Little Heart’s Short Fever Fit” by Thomas Lux.
Poor as a dog. Poor as owl scat tufted
with mouse fur and a chipmunk’s hip
bone. Poor as a louse without a valise.
He liked the deepest caves,
the getting to the bottom of them
(the deepest, about 7 mi. down, ending
in not so square three yards of packed sand)
and he liked better: climbing out.
It was harder climbing out: up, up, up,
poor as a used toothpick,
poor as a man evicted from the poorhouse,
poor as a hole drilled in dust.
Did I say he liked the deepest caves?
Small caves breathe, middle caves sing,
the deepest caves roar.
He liked the deepest caves.
Did I say he loved the abseiling, abseiling down,
and the inch-by-inch rock-climber’s winch
up, up to the cave’s agape mouth?
Did I say what, and those, he loved, (and he did love what and those)
even as I knew he made a failure of it?
Thomas Lux’s most recent book of poetry is Child Made of Sand (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). His book of nonfiction From the Southland was also published in 2012 by Marick Press.
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