Already Too Late

by Devon Balwit

The artist’s canvas shows it plain,

the rot behind the assurances

that all is OK. Far from it. We are

already gangrenous, the necrotic

creeping from our wounds, walls

gauze over bruises. Every surface

has been pounded, God revealed

as an angry smith. This rage

is the sound that keeps us awake

at three a.m. The door swells

outward with lingering questions. 

Far from lovely, the carved blossoms

scrolling its edges evoke the obsessive

rooting of the hygienist deep in our gums.

And what of the hand, reaching

its limp kerchief around the frame?

Is she a mourner arrived too late

or the deceased come to staunch

the very tears she made flow?

Perhaps she’s back for the blown

wreath, wanting to be remembered

as other than wilt and browning.

(after Ivan Albright’s “That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do (The Door)")

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Devon Balwit teaches in Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and three collections out, among them: We are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books), Risk Being/Complicated (A collaboration with Canadian artist Lorette C. Luzajic); Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders); and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). Her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, the Aeolian Harp Folio, Red Earth Review, Queen's College Quarterly, The Fourth River, The Free State Review, Red Paint Hill, and more.