Two Poems

by Daniel Edward Moore

Black River Heaven

There’s nothing subtle about it.

                            The wind’s clean teeth chew the earth

 like a famished friend

that conspires with the dark to spare the eyes

                            a lesson in rip and run. Nature’s gentle

motherly side shreds the world with swords.

Everything’s a target of god’s cold breath

                    leveling the world like a piece of flatbread.

It’s dipping in blood the grieving hate,

after heaven’s black river baptizes the world

                                           like a priest without consent.

In the name of ignorance and the choices

and the truth it will happen again,

                          cursed are we who confuse being good

with drowning the world as it sleeps.

They call it atmospheric to keep the head

                        away from the heart. Prayer becomes

nothing more than a leaking levee of tears.

On the Feast Day of Harm

After bearing witness to the loved and the vile

enter my childhood home, life was at risk

of respiratory failure, especially after losing

each breath the Turkey could not save.

DNA’s bad boys unhinged by the hustle

converted to quiet beige husbands,

grateful survivors of their wives’ cold stares

whose terror was geologically felt in France.

The fantasy of normal options flashing across

our family’s dirty screen was like a pioneer woman

having children with wolves. Nothing on this side

of her or the mountain made hell a Hallmark moment.

The boring died in the steps of the righteous

all the way to where Heaven became

the most beautiful lie ever believed,

whose terror was geologically felt in France.

BIO: Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His work has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, North American Review and more. His work is forthcoming in The Meadow, New Plains Review, Steam Ticket Journal and Action Spectacle Magazine. His book, “Waxing the Dents,” is from Brick Road Poetry Press.