The Zingara Project

Tag: Jeff Burt

  • Removing a Gate by Jeff Burt

    Maidenhair ferns at your feet
    seem to rise out of the dust for rain,
    the sword ferns sprawl to catch fog,
    and the maple lifts itself out of the soil,
    massive roots becoming visible
    like the muscles of a shirtless power-lifter.
    You have taken the widowed boards
    of the gate and saved them from the fire
    to build a little eave that shelters
    the dahlias from full sun,
    and now brushed by the breeze
    this creates they nod thank you
    thank you thank you,
    and you wonder what you can do
    for hikers and walkers weary from the dust,
    a small jug, a metal cup, a wooden bench.
    You have wood leftover,
    and the sun still to set.

    —

    Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County California, home of redwoods, fire, fog, and ocean. He has contributed to Rabid Oak, Williwaw Journal, Willows Wept, and Red Wolf Journal.

  • Morsel by Jeff Burt

    Forgive me, but as I type this to you in the early hours
    I cannot help but desire the cinnamon-sugar sweetness
    of the toast to slip from my unwashed fingertips
    onto the keys and into them, into their concussive shapes
    that mapped electronically now appear before you,
    I don’t want just the comfort of sweetness, or the butter
    in the bread that has been transferred to the keys
    that gives a satiation for having risen out of bed
    to a day that will be marked by more violence and injustice
    and the crooked making off with the honest person’s dollar,
    I want to send the stolen pleasure of it, the giddiness
    that comes from having oatmeal and plain toast day after day
    and then suddenly this sweetness, this lightness
    that no longer accompanies dawn but actually pulls
    light over darkness, as you have done for me
    so many countless days for so many countless years.
    You see only words. But let your fingertips linger.

    —

    Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County California, home of redwoods, fire, fog, and ocean. He has contributed to Rabid Oak, Williwaw Journal, Willows Wept, and Red Wolf Journal.

  • In the Quiet of Drought the Monarchs Perishby Jeff Burt

    The grass keeps on dying
    but never finishes, and what to bury
    dead ground in never comes up.
    A shovel turns, as if it’s restless.

    The soil warms and earthworms
    defect for a more conservative soil,
    the communizing surface effect lost
    when one has no soothing slide.

    Beetles that burrow for the loss
    of their virginity keep pushing dirt
    out of the holes and when sex strikes
    it is more of a match on a sandpaper strip

    than a moist bed of coupling.
    What does it matter—the male dies,
    the female swells and spawns,
    exits weary to become prey for jays.

    All dries, dies, withers.
    All the warbling birds
    and accompanying zithers
    of crickets and bees have throats

    and wings too thin to sing.
    My mouth tastes the dust
    the scraping rake brings up.
    I no longer water.

    —

    Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife and marauding bands of wild turkeys that scare trucks and cobble and gobble everything at their feet. He won the Cold Mountain Review Poetry Prize in 2017.

     

  • Early Morning Round by Jeff Burt

    The old women who rise early
    must think me the hound
    whose purest intention is to keep
    his habitual round
    as I plod the unlit county road
    in the rain, nose to the ground,

    led by a scent.  No meandering
    mutt am I, dog of hijink,
    junkyard, or bog.  Wet hair
    dripping my lips perpetual drink
    off the fountain of my nose
    I suppose they think I have a link

    lost in the chain of ideas, or missing
    boxcar on the train of thought.
    They don’t understand that out
    in the rain on the same old route
    I move at a pace which liberates
    limbs of faith from trunks of doubt.

    Rounding the bend and smelling the bread
    Mrs. Woods has baked I spy
    the waiting gait, and when I trod
    straight the road gone awry
    from spilling ditch near Emory’s pond
    I chase the ducks but they don’t fly.

    No longer a rushing cur am I.
    Intemperate geese nip at the back
    of my calves, and quacking ducks come
    pleading for the bread that I lack.

    Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California.  He has work in The Nervous Breakdown, Amarillo Bay, Across the Margins, and Atticus Review.  He was the summer issue poet of Clerestory in 2015.

     

  • Made Worse by Jeff Burt

    Hurt is the manner in which the homeless
    pronounce heart, and in doing so

    identify the state of it, their cold
    puckered mouths unable to slow

    the gutteral vowel. And we, more proud
    of our rags than the rich their silk,

    we had wanted to feed the famished, turn
    tanks and subs into cups of milk.

    But words cannot multiply fish and loaf,
    so you chose the worming up

    the corporate tree and I chose grubbing
    out cash for the most appealing group.

    Today I handed out cups of coffee
    to those who utter hurt for heart

    and mean the same, and listened to their cold
    hard prose, not a warm word in it.

    We have not written for these many years
    and I am one made worse for it.

    —

    Jeff Burt works in manufacturing. He has work in Dandelion Farm Review, Nature Writing, and forthcoming in Windfall and Thrice Fiction.