~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Denton Loving, Featured Poet

Denton Loving is the author of the poetry collections Crimes Against Birds (Main Street Rag) and Tamp (Mercer University Press). He earned the Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. He is a co-founder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including Iron Horse Literary Review, Kenyon Review, Tupelo Quarterly, The Chattahoochee Review, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and The Threepenny Review.

Breach

All our conversations circle back to desire,

you wanting to know what I want,

using desire singular as if I have only one

when I’m normally drowning in them.

I sailed once to South Africa’s Western Cape

to witness southern right whales breaching.

I wasn’t impressed at the penguin beach,

but the baleen mothers and their calves

breaking the horizon, splashing salt spray,

quickened my pulse—

The whole pod swam closer to observe us.

I wanted to dive in, to give myself

to their body of water,

but my guide held me back, reminding me

the ocean we desire might desire us

to live a little longer on dry land.

How to Raise an Obelisk

With rope and sand and a touch of genius,

experts say, but don’t get ahead of yourself.

The first trick is to recognize that ray

of light fossilized deep in the mountain.

Think red granite. Think white limestone

to glimmer in the distance. Draw ochre-

colored lines to direct scores of carvers

with their chisels and picks, their levers

and water-soaked wooden wedges. Once cut,

polish the rock face with fine-grit sand.

Smooth the surface to please the god

embedded within. Engrave the shaft

with battle stories. Embellish and repeat,

and paint with hard-won blood. Yes,

raising the needle is easier than historians

lead us to believe. And beside the point.

Careful! There’s a Man Inside the Belly of this Fish

Lost at sea, a man and his ship

slip through the teeth of a fish.

A young woman, alone

on a forgotten island,

wishes a wish.

With a flourish

of her hand,

the fish—the one

with the man and his ship

hidden in its abyss—

swishes into her arms.

Her hunger shifts.

Against her

whetstone,

she sharpens

her knife,

slices a clean line

along the dorsal fin.

Light slits through. The man

remembers he’s still alive.

The Word of the Day Is Largesse

From the Latin largus, meaning not just big but abundant,

generous: I am blessed by the largesse of those who came

before me, benefactors bestowing aid and alms, though

no one these days gives alms, another ancient word,

this one from Greek, akin to compassion. After Artemis

transformed Hippocrates’ daughter into a sea serpent,

men seeking the largesse of her father lined up to free

the girl with their kiss. Yet, those men fled the serpent’s

scaly mouth. Her split tongue. Her poisoned breath. Did I

mention those men each died soon after? The moral is,

if you can’t love with compassion, just get out. Leave.

I’ve been reading mythology and backbone recipes

like a man sizing up a bear. The backbone, or what’s left

after the ribs are cut, is prized for its flavor and tenderness.

Pork is good, but bear is better, makes delicious broth, soup

and stir fries. It was the only meat Davy Crockett would eat.

He killed hundreds of bears, leaving his wife for weeks to hunt.

To prepare your own backbone, ensure your cleaver is sharp.

Hack the meat into small pieces. Sauté generous, abundant

amounts of aromatics. Brown the meat and mix together.

Savor. Be sure you have plenty to give away.

Letter to Rilke

You say to have patience with everything unsolved

in my heart and to cherish the questions, but I’m

bursting with so much that is unnamed and unsolvable.

I’ve not yet learned to treasure locked doors, rooms

I’ve not been given access to. I’ve not yet learned

to be brave in the face of the inexplicable. Last month,

my sister died suddenly, and I have yet to mourn.

She was forty-seven years old, even younger than you

when ulcers filled your mouth instead of poems.

Yesterday, I flashed my hazards and stopped my car

on a busy road to help a box turtle reach the other side—

a small gesture for a species that has endured this earth

for two hundred million years—before lizards, before

crocodiles, long before there were snakes in Eden. Think

of all the strange tongues she has known and forgotten.

Is a language for grief one of them? Is she, like us,

unspeakably alone? The turtle reveals nothing.

Last week, flying from LaGuardia, I sat in a window seat

in an exit row. I considered the emergency door,

those few inches of carbon fiber composite separating me

from clouds and sky. An airtight lock and latch. Another

door with the future on one side, and me on the other,

afraid to die and afraid not to, which is to say, afraid to live.

Rosy Maple Moth

Resting from the rough work of pollination

and procreation, moths the size of my thumbnail

pepper the door jam and deck boards outside

my house. They await the imminent night shift

to take flight again, in some way the same way

I am resting from jagged desire, and I wonder

why I’ve never seen—or never noticed—

the strange beauty of their wooly yellow heads

and thoraxes, their silky pink and yellow wings,

their lives as luscious and as fleeting as my own.