POETRY BY BEN KLINE

GIVING UP THE DEW

Sneak through straight rain

into dusk’s silver linger.

Find two wigglers surfaced,

pink, pale as raw chicken.

Pick them from grass,

never concrete. Give them

the names of your best former lovers.

Chop them into even fourths.

Drop each gooey eighth

into a red plastic cup.

Add two pinches of sodium

chloride and bicarbonate,

a churned mouthful of spit,

one flake of willow bark

to all eight.

Cross the pasture

as they stew. Collect

four half cups of ditch water.

Avoid leaves, drowned squirrels,

dry raven feathers atop the stream.

On your way back, yank

a tuft of bloomed fescue.

Shred it with your lower

left incisor, the one

you chipped in our Christmas fight.

Once home repeat

those lovers’ names

three times as you drool

weed cud into the second

and fifth cups. Wash your hands.

Chug the first half cup

from the ditch. Quickly,

holding your breath.

Sip the second, the third,

a fourth if you can.

Your belly might swell.

Your flank might rumble.

God or Satan might

come through

with fire. Rest

until you cool, ghosts climbing

out your lungs, whispering

midmorning, Father, too

close, myrrh, fist,

thunder.