DEREK HENDERSON

Segue 9: Fall 10

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Segue 9: Fall 10

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CONTENTS

Poolside Triptych 4 scudding 6 Author Notes 7

Segue 9: Fall 10

Derek Henderson 4

Poolside Triptych

One last dog day, then the feet will wear new shoes. New shoes, do you see?

Of course you don’t find yourself dodging dogshit dropped on poolside pavement, alone with fleabitten feet and piles of dead flies that belie the beauty of california in fall.

You don’t find yourself alone with fleabitten feet, and a november moon, suddenly shivering in the metropolan desert, with nothing but paper & pen and letters to loved ones half-traced in your head.

Now I find that my hands are cold because of the mist (do you hear? because of the mist

which coats palm trees with a night without echoes;

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Derek Henderson 5

a freeway can’t find a voice between crickets and mist, though a thought of the sun at the back of the brain burns through the fog at the beginning of dawn).

And the last young dog disappears in the morning, bounds his way through to the end of a dream, slipping away (do you see, slipping away) with the remains of a shoe, leaving me standing on sunburned concrete.

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Derek Henderson 6

scudding

The shift of photographs taped to a blue and ambient wall in an antivalent wind: …to get behind the scenes of existence:

the musty shadows behind the photographs like the underskin of loved ones

(a face asmile in celluloid, a sigh in spring)

Half-asleep; a sound: the shuffling of feet or something close to it: … the rustle of leaves outside.

realize the afternoon air, realize teeth

(the ground, the leaves have left it)

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Derek Henderson 7

Author Notes Derek Henderson lives in Salt Lake City, where he is pursuing a PhD in poetry at the University of Utah. His poems have recently appeared, or are soon to appear, in Witness, CutBank, Black Warrior Review, The Journal, Puerto del Sol and Cream City Review. Inconsequentia, a book-length poem co-written with Derek Pollard, is due out with BlazeVOX [Books] this winter.