Marc McKee


Ahem de Menthe


How it works is it never works
until it does and then
it never works the same way again.
From the combustion of the ahem,
friends and daiquiri-swillers, a-HEM
you are my axe handle
and I am your novice and marm.
We are trying but it is terribly trying
to come to terms
with our subtractability, it involves
many maneuvers. For example, 
you are a petunia
and I am your sommelier.
You see how easy we stray.
Look at that cloud over there
not even trying to resist being 
a metaphor for the middle class.
You are a co-sign and I am
your shame share. Alas,
I wandered lonely as a middle class
and out loud, too. I pour the ahem
de menthe like a quickening,
pleasant wrench into the center
of your attention. 
Diverting your consumption 
is an occupational hazard, 
I stay pleased to wittingly strike
any crown in two. Any spillway 
leftovers I am happy to surf
into an aggressive delivery
of tennis balls, pamphlets, vials
of our vitals sent ahead, look—
Hey. I’m trying to come to terms
over here. The true prophet 
doesn’t hear in the intimation
of her mortality a rhyme
with the end of the world.
Come back. I am your turn, 
you are my term limit. It’s your serve
but even so I feel like it should stay
me serving you.



Ancient Gamble


The earth can’t be more than 100 hours old
and already the steel jewelry dangling 
from the ceiling in Exam Room 11
needs polishing. Forgive me: 
it’s some several hours 
since I came to the edge of anything
like this high dive. Forgive me: it’s millennia 
since I remembered to close my eyes.
When I got here they were picking up the tinsel
and the jokes had turned to rain drops
dotting the i’s on the armistice. 
It was just as if their arms tapered 
into ravaged circuitry and it was clear 
nothing was getting clearer.
Beneath me was one darkness 
as beneath each of us is a different darkness 
but what separated me from my darkness 
only just was a tongue, a diving board. From 
my vantage. Advantage. Some time must have 
passed. I poured everything that shined
into the darkness. It ceased none
in its taking. Forgive me: I looked everywhere
with everything I had. Falling things 
made the most music. I went ahead 
and sipped, I went right ahead 
and opened my mouth wider. 
Who doesn’t imitate each gesture
of a flower photographed 1000s of times
over the course of one day I don’t care
to mourn. There are so many ways to perform
an act of belief. The geese sounded terrified.
Who doesn’t swing on terror with a bouquet
and a song and a folded piece of paper 
I don’t care to be rescued by. Easy for me
to say. This thought is 100 years old, each year
in that thought 100 days of 100 hours each.
The thought twitches in its sleep, it sleeps
in a fattening vine. How long the vine 
of each thought has pulsed in my throat.
When I jump, I will twist in the air
away from each bright threat of debris.
If I am mistaken for firework, I may land
on my feet. I have been sitting ready 
to be help, unstill as I can 
this whole time.

 

Marc McKee is the author of five collections of poems, most recently Meta Meta Make-Belief (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). His recent work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Conduit, and Copper Nickel. He is the managing editor of The Missouri Review and lives and parents in Columbia, Missouri.

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