Distance from the Dream Self

Issue 7, Volume 2: Summer 2007
Poetry

No matter what he’s doing on the tip
of the skyscraper,
balancing like a clown,
I put him there.

Looking over his shoulder,
I see his collar turned up, spiky, a way
of wearing it I’ve never tried. When he hauls
so maniacally on the oars, I hardly recognise him.

I know he’s up to something I can’t figure
out. Every time he turns around, he secrets
something under his coat.
It whimpers, its tail twitching.

Ron Houchin is a retired public school teacher who lives on the banks of the Ohio River. He has three books published by Salmon poetry: Death and The River (1997), Moveable Darkness (2002), and Museum Crows (2009). His other books, Among Wordless Things (2004) and Birds in the Tops of Winter Trees (2008), were published by Wind publications. His awards include Appalachian-Book-of-the-Year-in-Poetry, a National Society of Arts and Letters Prize, an Ohio Arts Council Fellowship, a poetry prize from Indiana University, and a Writers’ Digest Award.