Christine Stroud
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Christine Stroud is a poet and editor living in Pittsburgh, PA. Her chapbook, The Buried Return, was released by Finishing Line Press in March of 2014, and her second, Sister Suite, was released by Disorder Press in 2017. Stroud’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Hobart, The Ninth Letter online, The Paterson Literary Review, Cimarron Review, The Laurel Review, and many others as well as several anthologies, including The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South.
Marcescence, or Everything I don't know about enlightenment
The vacuum quiet of an empty forest
snow-clad and bright. Beech leaves quiver
on the crisp wind. I stare at the depressed knot
of an oak. I can’t understand—is it another empty gnarl
or is there a small brown owl tucked into the opening?
My eyes water under the concentration, needing,
desperately, to know. I stand too long,
the cold grows through me, aching my fingers and toes.
All winter I strive to be the holler,
the bird calls bouncing between the hills,
echoing, but not permeating. I look for God.
Not the unknowable God,
but the God of my youth:
a large hand dropping
soft and harmless from above.
I search for signs in the branches.
I wait for animals to cross my path.
I make a mantra: this is mine
and I can let it go. This is mine
and I can let it go. Somewhere
in me the brown leaves cling
to their branches, they tremble:
and this is mine to keep.
This poem first appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The vacuum quiet of an empty forest
snow-clad and bright. Beech leaves quiver
on the crisp wind. I stare at the depressed knot
of an oak. I can’t understand—is it another empty gnarl
or is there a small brown owl tucked into the opening?
My eyes water under the concentration, needing,
desperately, to know. I stand too long,
the cold grows through me, aching my fingers and toes.
All winter I strive to be the holler,
the bird calls bouncing between the hills,
echoing, but not permeating. I look for God.
Not the unknowable God,
but the God of my youth:
a large hand dropping
soft and harmless from above.
I search for signs in the branches.
I wait for animals to cross my path.
I make a mantra: this is mine
and I can let it go. This is mine
and I can let it go. Somewhere
in me the brown leaves cling
to their branches, they tremble:
and this is mine to keep.
This poem first appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The Artist
We’re all seeking the truth, I suppose.
He spends hours mixing and remixing paints,
no canvas, no single story is safe
from revision, of being over- or unwritten,
or told again, then again, then again.
We’re all trying to be understood, I suppose.
But all interpretation becomes demeaning.
When the morning sunlight comes through the bedroom window,
it ruins everything. It translates nothing.
We’re all trying to find our other if there is such a thing.
But every time he tries to imagine, it’s just a black canvas
with that single wound of blue. It doesn’t mean anything, or
it does. Or it doesn’t to the others.
He mixes again. He paints again. He’s trying; I know.
We’re all seeking the truth, I suppose.
He spends hours mixing and remixing paints,
no canvas, no single story is safe
from revision, of being over- or unwritten,
or told again, then again, then again.
We’re all trying to be understood, I suppose.
But all interpretation becomes demeaning.
When the morning sunlight comes through the bedroom window,
it ruins everything. It translates nothing.
We’re all trying to find our other if there is such a thing.
But every time he tries to imagine, it’s just a black canvas
with that single wound of blue. It doesn’t mean anything, or
it does. Or it doesn’t to the others.
He mixes again. He paints again. He’s trying; I know.
This poem was first published in Catamaran
The Crows
It is not without compassion that I stop feeding the crows.
Look now, they hold tighter to the thin branch.
They preen their feathers; they begin to pluck them out.
Their black eyes have an infinite number of ways of looking at me
and like anyone I learned to love something so familiar.
It was clever the way they mimicked my voice,
offered it back: a shiny bit of foil, a jewel for the nest.
Oh yes, it sounded like my voice, but meaning’s been twisted,
it’s all wrong. In that dense forest of tall, lean pines,
I learned it was best to be quiet. Among the rustle
of feathers, those crows taught me silence at least.
But these days I’m tired of the taking. Their talking.
Their razor beaks. All that liver. All that blood.
They pluck their feathers, begin to pick at their flesh.
Calling out in my voice again, my words, they are so hungry
for it. Their damp nests smell of the forest floor, of book
pages old and forgotten. Still, I refuse them.
They do not forgive me; I do not care.
<
It is not without compassion that I stop feeding the crows.
Look now, they hold tighter to the thin branch.
They preen their feathers; they begin to pluck them out.
Their black eyes have an infinite number of ways of looking at me
and like anyone I learned to love something so familiar.
It was clever the way they mimicked my voice,
offered it back: a shiny bit of foil, a jewel for the nest.
Oh yes, it sounded like my voice, but meaning’s been twisted,
it’s all wrong. In that dense forest of tall, lean pines,
I learned it was best to be quiet. Among the rustle
of feathers, those crows taught me silence at least.
But these days I’m tired of the taking. Their talking.
Their razor beaks. All that liver. All that blood.
They pluck their feathers, begin to pick at their flesh.
Calling out in my voice again, my words, they are so hungry
for it. Their damp nests smell of the forest floor, of book
pages old and forgotten. Still, I refuse them.
They do not forgive me; I do not care.
<
This poem first appeared in Hobart.