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Sunder

By Atsuro Riley Atsuro Riley

A last rock-skip hurlstorm (crazing river-glass)

the closest they ever were.

•

In right lockstitch

snared and split some fire-supper cooked on sticks.

•

By dawn the older brother took to chucking

what bottle-frags he could find and crud-oysters across.

The (high-pitched) younger blacked our waters

with a yowl.

•

Lord the sound such as rose from him

carried so—

Carved

into us. Clings.

•

Hadn’t they clung tooth and claw to branch and bark.

—Came a man (and truck) to take them off.

•

Dieseled those boys off

away

some say somewheres upcountry,

inland.

•

Where it was they landed (why) nobody not them knows.

•

No body not them knows

just how they humped and grubbled home

what road they’d graved what woods criss-crossed

which creeks which trains they’d hopped who helped.

•

Came safe home sure but blank as houses.

Came safe home —as him —and him.

—as (evermore) not them.

Source: Poetry (April 2011).

Biography

Atsuro Riley grew up in South Carolina and lives in California. His heavily stressed, percussive, consonant-rich, free-verse poems conjure up the elemental images of the lives of people inhabiting a specific, acutely portrayed landscape. His poems are dense with impressions, voices, and glimpses of people who have experienced the Vietnam War, rural life, and the South. Though grounded in a world that seems unmistakably North . . .

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