Tag Archives: Jeff Burt

Removing a Gate by Jeff Burt

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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

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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 Perish by Jeff Burt

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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

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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

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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.