Two Poems by George David Clark

Child Sleeping with a Hand on Her Heart

I pledge allegiance
………..to the sun and snow,
the grass and wind
………..and rain, the trees,
my pink rose dress,
………..and everyone I know.
I pledge to wear
………..my cowgirl hat
to bed, to chalk
………..a hundred squares
of sidewalk red
………..with big-eyed cats
and deer. I pledge
………..to drape my ankles
off the edge
………..of anything,
to switch the quick words
………..in my favorite songs,
to tuck a clover
………..in the niche
behind my ear.
………..I pledge sometimes
to weigh an aimless
………..meanness in my dolls’
soft minds, to practice
………..secrets with them,
to perfect unlikely lies.
………..I double pledge
allegiance to the phrase
………..me next, the question
why, allegiance
………..to my Mom and Dad,
my three live brothers,
………..and the one who died.
I pledge allegiance
………..to the short tomorrow
after this brief nap,
………..to bedtime’s poem-
song-and-prayer,
………..the wide tomorrow
after that. I pledge
………..allegiance to our God
who’s off away
………..in Henry’s heaven
which He made,
………..who Daddy tells me
knows my names
………..are Gemma Lemon,
Lemonade,
………..his Gemma-Bear,
and Gemma Clark.
………..I trust my breath
into the cool
………..green air. I pledge
my rest into
………..a breathless dark.

Discrete Dilations of the Needle’s Eye

Revealed is different from exposed.
The windows dark, the lights addressed:
one shadow, then the next, disrobed.

Revealed was different. She exposed
how, even naked, he stayed clothed—
a leather coat of consciousness.

Revealed is different from exposed:
the wind goes dark, the night’s undressed.

George David Clark’s Reveille (Arkansas, 2015) received the Miller Williams Prize and his recent poems can be found in AGNI, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Image, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. The editor of 32 Poems, he lives in Washington, Pennsylvania.