EMBASSY
I am teaching a few diplomats
about some skeletons that keep walking
with their words that sound like extra
ribs squeezing a breeze from a stump.
My powerpoint is almost pointless,
snitches, flogs, knuckles, slumbers, skulls,
during the late morning of being alone
with so few. They might soon speak like me,
with ghosts, with sunlight turned in a rifle scope,
and with a treaty that has no bullets for one hour.
This is where I think I am being locked up
with my words. This is where my old farm
ancestors laugh and ask why bother the ambassador,
why explain any notion of peace, why mumble
about tottering back home at the end of a poem.
The sky is balking like a mule on a rush hour freeway.
—by Clyde Kessler
Copyright © 2021 Clyde Kessler. All Rights Reserved.
Clyde Kessler lives in Radford, VA with his wife Kendall and their son Alan. In 2017 Cedar Creek published his book of poems Fiddling At Midnight’s Farmhouse, illustrated by his wife.