Two poems by Kevin Clark

TWO GODS

—I’d been told I shouldn’t touch you 
before we were sure the flights hadn’t spread 
infection. My platelets low these many months
later, I had the kind of cough that wracks like
lava spit from deepest alveoli. A week away,
and you hurried to the car where we spoke
in modesties of gratitude, my deaf brother’s  
new phone, your old friend’s marriage plunged
into sudden vacuum, our voices shaded by
one sure fact in an undefined future, the cast
of our words sinewed with care now that my last 
biopsy came back all clear. The miniscule spores 
floated beyond detectable reach, as if waiting 
for a cruel Spring to flower back to dominance. 
I fall back, though not often, upon our wedding 
album—how beautiful we all were, nearly divine, 
the farm sky in our summer windows catching 
the timbre of your skin on that foam mattress 
as we furled over all the gold flowers I’d pilfered  
from the almond orchards. And do you remember? 
That August day in cut-offs and tie-dye tops 
we rolled down all the windows of the ancient 
Nova to beat the dry scorch of the valley 
as we pressed east onto Hwy 49, parked
and laced our hands for sure footing down
the moss-slick banks to sit in aquamarine 
pools of the South Yuba, a few others sunning
 
like nameless relatives upon the giant boulders. 
Then, the way we all stopped to watch:
Two gods holding hands, as if walking 
on biblical waters, tall and wholly naked 
in the shallow river, such elect pageantry, 
hellenic faces, both their bodies ascensional 
in ripples of sunlight. After the efflorescence 
of disease, some folks feel betrayed by the body.
But during the good days, I’m transfigured by you 
still, even returning home from the airport without
a kiss, even as the indifferent happenchance works
within me. At the river that day, we knew to head 
back to the hormonal grace of our imperfections,
having shrugged off unmatchable beauty for a life
together, almost laughing, sunburnt past touch.  

RESCUE PASS

My wife’s foot blitzing the gas, we reel
Out of the hospital parking lot as if the future 
Has short shelf life, her smile turned grimace
As daylight bears the drooling wolf still tracking

Me. How much time do I have? My head 
Clips the window, then swivels left 
Before settling due plumb. She aims north, hard 
For home, tires howling the white lines’ hurry, 

Shrill with fugitive freedom—like rising 
From a week-long coma to find yourself
In a car surging at speeds beyond 
Internal measurement, the medulla oblangata

Barely holding to the base of the brain pan. Four 
Months of chemo and the death-sheer transplant
Blanched the neural network into brute fatigue, 
The world spinning every tree and billboard past

My slow-floating face. Despite the lupine light
Slavering ahead, we press up then over 
The Pass, where at last our flight holds
To the blind rapacious curve of what’s-to-come. 

Kevin Clark’s third volume of poems The Consecrations is published by Stephen F. Austin University Press. His book Self-Portrait with Expletives won the Pleiades Press prize. Clark’s poetry appears in the Southern, Georgia, Antioch, and Iowa reviews, as well as Copper Nickel, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, etc. A former critic for The Georgia Review, he’s published essays in The Southern Review, Papers on Language and Literature, and Contemporary Literary Criticism. He taught at Cal Poly and the Rainier Writing Workshop. 

6 July 2026