NATHAN HAUKE
Nathan Hauke was born and raised in rural Michigan. His first book, In the Marble of Your Animal Eyes, is forthcoming from Publication Studio. He is also the author of chapbooks Honeybabe, Don’t Leave Me Now (forthcoming from Horse Less Press), S E W N (Horse Less Press 2011), and In the Living Room (Lame House Press 2010). His poetry has been published in American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Dusie, E-Ratio, Interim, Momoware, New American Writing, Parthenon West, Real Poetik, Spork, Twenty Six, TYPO, and We Are So Happy To Know Something, among others. Two of his poems, “Deerfield (1)” and “A Surface. A Shore or Semi-transparency of Glass,” were recently selected to be a part of The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral anthology that GC Waldrep and Joshua Corey edited for Ahsahta Press (2012). A talk about poetics and getting a small press off the ground in a rural community written in collaboration with his Ark Press co-editor Kirsten Jorgenson, entitled Country Music, is forthcoming as a chapbook from DoubleCross Press (2012).
SKETCH
Saying Jesus.
A cube of sugar
melting in a horse’s mouth.
Leaves cluttered around the cement ramp
into the shallow end
Rings of light
bounce across pool’s scummy green water.
The inner wall’s echo
Flat, hot sunlight
on the right side of my face.
Gold strings of leaves falling through a
mouthful of cold beer.
CLOUD LIKE
A plastic grocery bag caught in the top of a pine
Dirty window leaned against a pile of bricks
Shredded VHS tape that glitters in the median
Decrepit family graveyard
Where mirror puts the sun in the ground
FACE WAS
A busted mailbox
A hole in the foreground collecting distance
Styrofoam, leaves, clutter where you
Companion strange tenderness
Over the hum of the engine
F’S
Sick in the yard near the blue table
Walks the perimeter eating grass
…………………………………
Corner of dirty light near the steps
Asking for a little magic
Where the broken branch carries me
Stray feather near the trunk
That was days ago already