Chad Bennett

one poem

But Could You

But could you drown it in a sink

But could you drown it in a pail

In a small slummed pool of rainwater

Could you

And you say it doesn’t matter

But could you drown it in this lake

This eye’s busted cloud

In night edging day or

Some thrumming that breeds in the sedge

Meant bleeds

No, broods

Oh you say it doesn’t matter

Winged things unseen and harboring

But could you

In the thicket of

In the now-hatched air

And with all we know

Could the thing you least

In the tub’s blood shiver

I mean could you

Chad Bennett is the author of Your New Feeling Is the Artifact of a Bygone Era (Sarabande Books, 2020) and Word of Mouth: Gossip and American Poetry (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). He lives in Austin, Texas, where he is an associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.