Rich Ives

She Needed a Perspective From Which to View the Damage

Because one of us leaves, one of us stays the same.
You can’t expect me to know which one.

I don’t know what to do with a given,
but I too have taken and held myself apart.

Such knowledge is not a commodity but a container.
Possibilities cannot be sold, but they can be betrayed.

When you let go, something former is lost.
When what was lost lets go, something is gained.

Not even what you are contains all that you were.
Wisdom doesn’t have to wait for its tired contributors.

I’m not where I should be. You’re not where I should be either.
There are two welcome chairs, but only one space between.

 

Dr. Wingate’s Fascination with the Appearance of Calm

It’s actually impossible not to repeat yourself,
dragged around in a circle by this planet like a molecule
in the leg of someone running away or making oatmeal.

Sometimes you just hold on.

My problems needed me enough
to take me away from myself, and I had to give them
something of myself the planets didn’t need.

I had that molecular-sized feeling of wonder about
how much would be left.

In the movement of where you are
around the misunderstanding of where you were,
the home delivery bills add up.

There’s no one to take out the air.

 

Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Dublin Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction Daily and many more. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. In 2011 he received a nomination for The Best of the Web and two nominations for both the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. He is the 2012 winner of the Creative Nonfiction Prize from Thin Air magazine. His book of days, Tunneling to the Moon, is currently being serialized with a work per day appearing for all of 2013 at http://silencedpress.com