She threw her Thomas Bernhard books at him,
it took eight or nine minutes.
Then she left, running over him with her Yukon.
The cigarette she’d thrown down
smoked itself without fanfare
in the crushed gravel of the footpath.

My binoculars make a small gap in the living room curtains.

He rolls over in the drive, onto his back,
and tries to wiggle his toes, but cannot.
Oh the day does darkle, he thinks…
right away wondering about his use of darkle.
But the day is darkling.
Oh yes indeed, indubitably it darkles.

 

 

 

_____
“The Couple” appears in Michael Earl Craig’s new poetry collection, Woods and Clouds Interchangeable (Wave Books, 2019), available here.