Three poems

By Courtney Cikach

Tenderness

I’ve been trying to save

The little things lately

The sapling I snapped near in two

From stepping too hastily,

Now bound with twine and hope

The hornet buzzing on the wrong side

Of the window,

Freed to fly home once more

The worm on the hot pavement,

Moved to a soft patch of grass

Driving has become difficult -

Butterflies during the day and

Moths at night

I slow and swerve my car

To avoid them

Aware of the bizarre dance

I am trying to show tenderness

In a not tender world

I cannot seem to save the girl in Gaza

Who has one limb left

After a bomb hit her home

Or the boy in Sudan with arms

So thin that you can see his bones

Eyes sunken into his skull

Or even the children of the USA

From being riddled with bullets

At school

Or the little ones dragged out of bed

Naked

In Chicago and bound with zip ties

While a masked man yells

‘Fuck them kids’

So if you see me saving a spider

or swerving to miss a toad

or letting a mosquito drink my blood,

please understand that tenderness is a practice.

Save everything you can.

Atomic Nightmares
after ‘I Worried’ by Mary Oliver

Sleep no longer comes easy

I haven’t shut my eyes tonight

I worry that I will wake to find I’m

An irradiated ghost.

Glowing and terrible.

Formless.

An evaporated memory.

All phantasm and rage.

Will there be someone left for me to haunt?

Buried beneath the ashes of all that ever was

A few cowards in a bunker

That still have flesh on their bones

Breath in their lungs?

Will I plunge them into darkness?

Rot their rations?

Fill their dreams with the screams of

Everyone they’ve killed?

Shall I envelop them in dread

To make their shelter

A tomb?

Instead of counting sheep

I’m plotting vengeance.

It’s the first day of March

And I’ve robed myself in

Ash and anger

Instead of green shoots and birdsong.

I am not the spectre

But the possessed.

If you witness enough evil

Its wails rattle your bones

With a death march that echoes

‘Nothing is safe. Nothing is sacred.’

And yet this morning the sun

Refracts rainbows in my hair.

The chickadee reminds me with a chirp

that her seed is running low

And the tulip trees are crowned with buds.

Nothing is safe. Everything is sacred.

I leave the ghosts and go out into the morning.

Decomposition

The vultures have returned

A black shadow over my form

Pulls my gaze upwards

Dark wings on blue sky.

I yell ‘WELCOME BACK!’

To the heavens

And wave like a child

A smile on my face

For the first time in ages.

I love the carrion eater -

who hovers at the space between worlds.

Holiest of birds.

Would that he break open my chest

And eat the dead parts of my heart.

The dried up sinew

The valves that no longer pump.

I want to decompose in the belly

Of the earth.

Devoured by vultures

A fruitful plane for fungi

Scavenged by creatures

With feathers and claws

Or exoskeleton

And hyphae.

I want my bones to return to

Stardust.

I want my blood to run through

The xylem of a Sycamore tree.

I want every tear I ever cried to fill

The dry river beds of a dying land.

I want my breath to be carried on the wind

To every careless ear

Bidding them to remember the

Sacredness

        Of

               Life.

The vulture does not look down

But circles again.

I feel lighter for a moment.

Like air under feathers.

Like death itself.

Gentler, always, than

man.

Courtney Cikach is a poet who lives in a small township near Cleveland, Ohio. Courtney is always happiest when surrounded by trees, dogs, or piles of books. Courtney studied Classics at Claremont McKenna College and Food Studies at the University of Gastronomic Sciences and currently works in IT funding for the primary and secondary education.