Elijah Burrell

three poems

No One Likes to Be Let Go

The kite drifts above Lake Junaluska,
like a girl’s hand skimming, swimming
the air outside a passenger window.
The spool slackens, the kite ascends
on the current up high above the water.
From such distance and height, a life grows clearer.
The wind splits and riffles the waves
and, without warning, the hand lets go
of the string. Above the logging trucks
and minivans, the highway’s din,
the kite drifts farther. No one laments
its noiseless flutter, its silent leaving.
The surprise is how easy it is to let go,
to watch as it’s swallowed by the mountains’ haze.

Mr. Night

His nostrils glisten; shaggy
behemoth, red coat

of hair, a Hereford bull.
He solidifies on my side

of the tree line, rusty
palette, muted swirl

the color of water in the jar
into which my daughter dips

her brushes. Murk and ripple.
He becomes new from old.

He travels here like me:
a stray finding his way,

by lumbering into a stray.
He says, [YOU MAY FIGHT. YOU MAY RUN.]

Bluebird CAPTCHA

I stand my ground to test the beast,
to know my danger, truly, to herd
him into a lie. I hold a screen
to his blunt, grazer snout—my distorted
name spelled out. “Read it aloud.”
[BLUEBIRD,] he says. [YOUR NAME IS BLUEBIRD.]

Somehow, he’s right.
Pavement beneath my feet—from nowhere—
a thin road through the stray field.
In the half-light, maybe last light, a life
jacket left on the weedy shoulder.
I lift my head to a yellow flashing
signal above and between Mr. Night

and me. [SELECT ALL SQUARES WITH TRAFFIC
LIGHTS,] he says. I bend down, and grip
the preserver, its frayed webbing, and red-
to-bleached-out fabric. Down the road,
arrhythmic yellow, caution caution
caution. too many lights to choose.

I say, “Please. Let me try again.”

Elijah Burrell was raised in Missouri and has lived there for most of his life. Aldrich Press published his second poetry collection, TROUBLER, in 2018. His first collection, The Skin of the River (Aldrich Press), was published in 2014. Burrell received the 2010 Jane Kenyon Scholarship at Bennington College, where he earned his MFA in Writing and Literature at Bennington’s Writing Seminars. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as AGNI, North American Review, The Hopkins Review, Southwest Review, The Rumpus, Sugar House Review, Measure, Iron Horse Literary Review, and many others. In 2012 Burrell joined the faculty of Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. An Associate Professor in Lincoln’s Department of Humanities and Communications, he teaches creative writing.