Anthology Selection: 1981

Vintage Bat on a Page of Words

"Blemishes" was first published in The Chariton Review at Truman State University in the Fall 1979 issue, and it was selected for publication in Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry, 1981 Edition. Edited by Alan F. Pater. Beverly Hills: Monitor Book Company, Inc. 185-186. 

Blemishes

James Hart

Tales of witches warned me

not to play with toads,

whose urine would

leave ugly warts.

So I gazed more closely

into the clots of white foam

dripping from the dog’s jaw

to see the toad’s blemish,

and mark it for my own.

Leaving the dog to snap at toads,

I might have stared deeply

into the mildewed eyes

forming in dark damp places

and seen its spreading truth,

like time foxing pages of books

with tracks of its passing.

Out of some such freckled books

I was taught to gauge my faith

in the red blemishes of spiked

hands and feet, a severed groin.

I learned in one book

that squid ejaculate ink

as writ against betrayal.

Heavy with remembered dreams

this night, I awake to find

pores oozing on my neck.

I feel my strength ebb,

like bat wings at dawn.

I distrust the shadows darkly

playing in the corners of my room

where the last days’ dust covers cracks.