Poem by Martha Rhodes

Capable of                            

Goes off on own and severs
the world in half: his / ours, we’ve come to see.
In other words, we avoid each other’s 
sides.

Such a volatile day we used to say,
standing in the cloud of exhaust that spread
and rose and deposited itself upon us,
for he agitated our entirety.  God knows

he was capable of disturbance. We continue
to look over our shoulders as we progress
through our days—what matters, we agree, is he isn’t
where he was.

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Martha Rhodes is the author of five poetry collections, most recently "The Thin Wall" (Pitt Poetry Series, 2017).  She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Since 2010, she has directed the Conference on Poetry at the Frost Place in NH. She is a founding editor and the director of Four Way Books.

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