Apples in November

imagine their plucking
the year's twilight
nigh in air
a barbarous red
welling
up
suffusing the slack bough with iron

the fruit split through
suddenly
novel crops
unhidden
the leaves' bullion
thick with love
their viridian

all day spent squelching
onto property
warm and enormous
in a fly's idle
rotting flabby as
scallop mouths
or sodden between trees like
runny death-soup
putrid cushions
and breath
















The Bee Meeting

for Bill W
I'm exhausted-
the navigational
dance to the hive of a village rehab
tranquilized with blackouts of sleep

I
unbuttoned to my knees
the nurse came
untying my case
emptying this glass

I arrived in canvas coat and mesh mask
the doctors nodding to their fever charts

I gagged on a length of wax
this sentence
of droning sobriety
flightless
while
the honey spoiled beneath my mattress












Andrew Demcak is in the middle of his second Master's program, an MLIS in Library and Information Science at UC Berkeley (his first Master's Degree is in English). He is the Outreach Services Director for Oakland Public Library in California, which is a fancy way of saying he runs the Bookmobile. He is the recipient of many literary awards and prizes which he is too modest to list here at this time. In his busy schedule he still finds time to read Moomintroll novels and collect vintage Gouda pottery.






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