Two Poems

Jeremy Michael Clark

The South Got Something To Say

Not an ounce of your body’s bloodis yours alone, yet you darecarry it across state lines,knowing what happens to anyone caughtwith that kind of contraband.You might think you have no accent,                                  but open your mouth& I’m all they hear. Not a word you saybelongs to you.                                  A Cadillac’s trunk,an empty pantry, dumpster, grave:how is the shape of your mouth any different? 

Memory, Flooding Back

The river’s rise out of itself beganin the west, the lowest partof the city. Its first breach of the bank:subtle, just a thin filmof water over the land, like a handcoaxes a child to sleep. Within hours,it reached our homes. When the waterseeped through the window, I feltso confused. How like a child to thinkthe house had started to cry.

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Photo:
Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Jeremy Michael Clark is from Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of the chapbook Some Blues I Know By Name, and his first full-length collection, The Trouble with Light, is forthcoming from Ledge Mule Press. Currently, he is a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, and lives in Brooklyn. He can be found online at jeremymichaelclark.com.

Spring/Summer 2020

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

Stadler Center for Poetry
Bucknell University

Editor 
G. C. Waldrep

Managing Editor
Andrew Ciotola

Editor-at-Large
Shara Lessley

West Branch is a thrice annual magazine of poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews, founded in 1977 and housed at the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University.

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