Poetry by Clinton Waters

Clinton W. Waters is a poet and fiction author born and raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky. They have a Bachelor's Degree in Creative Writing from Western Kentucky University. Their work has been featured in Untelling Magazine as well as Still: The Journal. 

Bouquet

 Just set them down

anywhere. Later, I'll

snip away at their

long necks, already

severed from their

body. Can they still feel

their roots? Do they still

soak up rain from their soil,

despite being decollated?

They’re awful pretty.

I'll set them in some water

so they keep their color

for a few more days.

I might save a few, even

as they give up their green ghosts,

and press their petals flat

in a big book I'll never read.

It'll go back on the shelf to molder.

And then one day, I'll need

a doorstop or something handsome

to put on the coffee table

and they'll float down to

the ground. I won't remember

the occasion, but I'll remember

you, in the kitchen,

your hands bursting with blooms,

and your cheeks blossoming pink,

and your pollen floating golden in the air.

 Overthinking Matthew 5:29-30

 Pardon, preacher. I’ve been thinking.

Does any part of me

cause me to sin? Do I get to choose

if my right hand does the sinning

before it gets chopped off?

It’s been awful busy, to tell

you the truth. It picks up booze

and cheeseburgers and holds

the hand of my one-day husband.

Does the left hand know

what the right hand’s doing?

Can it be tried as an accomplice?

Could my blood be an accessory?

Surely the head is the mastermind

behind it all and the rest just follow suit.

Not to mention the kissing lips, the flopping

tongue. Several sinful dirty birds with one stone,

and this way you don’t have to throw that

big, heavy, dusty rock. Before you do,

do you think my heart could plead insanity?

It hasn’t been right for years, y’know.

I know we’re Baptist but if my head gets lopped, could

I still carry it around the way some saints do?

Hey, mister, is the amputation penance enough?

I sure hope the soul’s not soft enough to slice

by knife, or you’ll have mine

drawn out and put on a board.

You’ll follow the dotted lines

and have soul shank for dinner.

Honestly, if I were to remove every part of me that’s

sinned, I would be diced into fatty chunks. Small enough

to fit on them wafer thin slices of Christ they

hand out with grape juice every once and a while.

Do you reckon maybe then I’d be holy?

 Last Cicada Song

 A single cicada whirrs and

chirps off in the high noon

eaves of a pine tree.

It is in this alien world

for a brief time, a single

breath of summer’s sweat-streaked labor.

New growth green and

crispy at the edges,

it sings for you,

for a creature it cannot

fathom, only knowing

cry and wait and mate.

But it is too late,

the others have lived already

and lay in the litter below.

It’s a withering angel

playing its only instrument.

It will not hide

and does not have long,

regardless of the winged

shadows that swirl in the branches.

It’s waited its whole life

to feel the light, can’t you

hear it in its mouthless wail?

It gets its musical body, its beauty, for a blink.

And it has no one to share it with.

So stay a while and listen.

Fruit

 I'm dying all the time,

shriveled, shrunken.

Dead on the vine.

I am sour, cold

and soggy.

Bruised flesh. Spotty.

My powers wane.

I grow weak in

the summer sun.

Maybe you can see

The promise of what

I could have been,

little hopes lodged

in transparent meat,

merely love left to rot.