five poems

by Deron Eckert

Fiancée

There is something about the word

fiancée that makes it simply the sweetest

since the word girlfriend. Fiancée is so

much sweeter than even the word love

or the earnest yes—oh my god, right there.

May very well just be the French origin,

but it is more likely that fiancée promises

forever not just the longed for possibility

that precedes the promise of forever.

How sweet the word wife will be one day

this approaching October and forever

not just the promise of forever.

What ever will I do with that much

sweetness, my sweet soon-to-be wife.

May very well pop, like a balloon filled

to the popping point with air or water.

Truth be told, I am already bursting

into bloom, like a flower that starts

to sprout long before it breaks ground,

having soaked up so much of everything

Heaven and Earth has to give prior to being

graced by the rumor-proved-true light

of the sun that it can’t help but know

the sun long before it knows its light

or just how lovely a sun-soaked life will be.

Andrea Allegedly Died, or a Rebuttal to The Year of Magical Thinking

 after Megan Falley’s continued life with Andrea Gibson

A spirit does not know

what it’s going to be

from one life to another

or where it’s been

in between

or if there even is

an in between

or an end to begin

again. The spirit knows

only when it’s alive

from touching so many

and leaving so much

behind the spirit can’t help

but see there is nothing

behind because there is

so much left around us,

even now, even when

the spirit is all we have

in the shape of letters

touching and not touching

to form words and so many

verses you could fill a Bible

if not for the questions

inherent to the verses

that said and meant so much

and answered so little,

you could call them

unfinished. Yet they told us

from the moment we heard

the word is the answer,

the answer is God,

God is the Trinity,

including a Holy Spirit,

and a spirit never dies.

Who are we to listen

to the word of God

and have the gall

to call her reported death

anything but alleged

in the face of all this

liveliness she left penned

to all powerful people,

not God. She never needed

to look up to be saved.

You can’t save what is free,

and what is freer than a spirit.

Reading Dream Story When I Should Be Dreaming

There was a time I could manage to relate to Tom Cruise,

or at least the frantic character he played in the Kubrick

adaptation with a sexier, subtler title set in a sexier time

lacking all subtlety, but a few years past a marriage’s end,

I fail to see with my eyes wide shut or open why the guy

didn’t just go ahead and get divorced instead of staying

with Nicole Kidman playing Nicole Kidman and stop

worrying himself near-to-death whether she was or wasn’t

fucking another man while he was flirting with the idea

of infidelity every time he had the opportunity to flirt

with partygoers dressed to the nines or an orgygoer

dressed in nothing more than a feathery mask and choker

with only a blanket of pubic hair covering her down there

until she threw on a thong to whisper his ear a fair warning

that orgies are bonkers and filled with men even badder

than a married man with a daughter who can’t stay in

without titilating his general anxiety into a potential

reality where his wife is either a cheat or victim until he gets

to have an adventure of his own that could’ve easily been

adventured earlier by muttering five syllables and filing a few

papers that basically read, Let’s call this done now since

we both know the love is there, but it’s not like it was before.

Instead, that simple exchange was shoveled into the orgygoer

throwing on a thong after we had already seen her bare

or some other symbolism buried deep beneath the surface

of a story that can be taken as a face value nightmare or a fever

dream of a husband who can’t bring himself to let everything go,

even as it drives him madder and madder into his dreams

because the one thing the married man longing for liberation,

the story, and the adaptation have in common is the inability to be

honest, earnest, and true to themselves about what they are

and what they want out of life, which is what everyone wants:

love and sex with trust and respect and, maybe, a little adventure

but not so much you’re driven mad by the uncertainty of it all.

Cemetery in Snow

Left for work in the morning’s night, long past

the days when we saved daylight, so exhausted

from the season’s void I considered calling in,

but en route to the Capitol, I find myself staring

out the driver’s side window sprinkled with

headstone after headstone glazed in not icing

but ice from the freezing night’s freezing rain

and devoid of a single grave marker due to

the two to three inches of accumulation we got

that concluded this morning and nearly cancelled

this day. Drives me to turn up the heat, The Stooges,

and whatever it is within that keeps me going

because as much as I want to drive back home, undress,

and crawl right back into bed with you and the dogs,

there is enough time to do all that and more later.

I still have a later. I still have time before I, too, am

reduced to a headstone coated in ice or a grave

marker smothered by a mound of winter’s white.

May I take neither this nor any day so lightly I lose sight

of the daily discovery that I have not yet been laid to rest

in the cold ground I am fortunate to be warmed by

even more than the furnace I wish to one day reduce me

to ash, so I may be retrieved by the strongest current

of wind or sea or whatever it shall be that wishes

to pluck me from this Earth and relieve me of an eternity

buried six feet out of reach of the warmth of others

living fully enough, even on their dullest of days,

that they may glance my way as a reminder of just

how lucky they are not to be anything like me—

eyes, lips, and a coffin sealed shut, resting so bloodlessly

I can neither be bothered by nor escape the chill of death.

Our Food’s Dead

Every last morsel of it. From the banana

nut muffins on the counter to the tomatoes

ripening in the window to the obvious chicken

breasts stripped of their feathers, skin, and bones

and left to slowly decay in the refrigerator

with the rest of the dead animals, harvested crops,

and other products of death we find acceptable

not only to shove in our faces but also let go

to waste on occasion. Hell, even what we drink

is going bad before we get the chance to twist

the cap or crack the carton. Water itself goes

to shit and gets that off flavor prior to algae

pooling at the bottom of the glass once it’s left

sitting out long enough. And get this? Air

hastens the degeneration of every single thing

we eat and drink. Swear it’s as though we are

not meant to enjoy a single thing that is truly

fresh unless we grow it ourselves and eat it

on all fours before it’s even picked, like the dying

animals we are.

Photo of Deron Eckert

BIO: Deron Eckert is a Pushcart-nominated poet and writer who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Appalachian Review, Atlanta Review, Wild Roof Journal, Blue Mountain Review, Rattle, Stanchion, The Fourth River, and elsewhere. He can be found on Instagram at deroneckert.