Two Poems by David Tuvell

Forward Plain

Genesis

Begins as breath. Titter, sniffle.
The little voice. Unabridged, sans serif.

Eve

Dress it pretty, then. Skirt, bonnet.
Hushed as a comely girl.
Have her sit, play “Für Elise.”
A tidy scene, like a sentence
without vowels. Craft clarinets,
not whistles, my pet.
Music, not screaming.
Nothing is painful between the knobs,
crags of consonants.
How lovely, flutters and tumults
under an airtight veil.
The bride to be. Or,
what your bride might be.
Depending on tradition.

Gardening

Sinuous, the hours.
Differences of tree and fruit
cradle days: nervous
grenadiers without targets.
Panic greets a whoosh, another
voice, around a kindled wick.
Frenetic cull of beastly
sounds, common threads. Fuses,
not clothes. Braided
lengths of pity, like absolution.

Expulsion

The blank pages welcome
any big bang: howling, breathy
charges, or calmly packed dummies,
birthing quiet, loose anatomies.

 

Insulince
I hope you never come down,
from so high up on life’s stage.
The audience applauds any show
that pities sin’s lavish wages.

I hope you never come down
from what a pretty face I have,
and how I’ll just be handed
all the things you never had.

I hope you never come down,
again, long enough to feel
that piled-up need to butcher meat
until it looks the way you feel.

I hope you never come down,
so I’ll always feed you sugar,
ant-infested—plus a laugh—
for your diabetic coma.

About the Poet
David Tuvell has written poems appearing, or forthcoming, in Coe Review, Easy Street, Minetta Review, Mud Season Review, New Orleans Review, Steel Toe Review, and other publications. His Bachelor of Arts in English comes from Kennesaw State University, and he also studied substantially at the University of Florida. Outside of poetry, David’s path has been quite various, and he has made his way through things like information science, information technology, and labor.