Uncanny—the little shrine our friend
Tanya’s grandfather built around his Virgin Mary statue,
chairs pointed at it, a stone in each chair—maybe for the souls
of great-grandparents—in New Jersey, where Walt Whitman lived
like a long-horned sheep in a meadow
wedged as a paper stopper for elderberry wine.
Primitive
David Blair is the author of five books of poetry and a collection of essays. His newest book True Figures: Selected Shorter Poems and Prose Poems, 1998-2021 is now available from MadHat Press. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, and he teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire.