Rodney Koeneke - Three Poems

Routinely Being Erased

Would that most become them? Does it
Most make them happy? Bruises
Are medals for people with nothing
But bodies to bear them—display
Is kind and it’s their carapace.
But does that make you happy?
To please what you shame?

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Completing the Census

True to the German you would have had to dream in
Quilts warm a peasant’s interior room.
Crude boards lift psalms to number,
Ages of children with names unremembered.
Doesn’t matter, they won’t hear them—
Road salt on car doors, boots in a box
Already by morning they’d driven away.

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Good to Know

Good to know the amber strips
Work while I sleep, to know
Stones sink before you even throw them,
Will say in prose what love means
As they drop. Let them insist
But don’t you believe them, razing
The cities, burning pavilions—love
Is the church that pulled down my home
And I’ll hit any strings that come to hand.