by Wade Bentley
On dog day Saturdays, when Paul and Ann Sit still beside their cardboard sign and wait For thirsty crowds to stop and drink their wares Of tepid yellow, and when hours of prate About the general going to hell of things Has settled on my parlored mind like waves Of musty, sunlit dust, I cake my leave For cooler, attic air: The mauve enclaves And shadowed nooks where all my leeward life Lies boxed and fading in the yellowed suns Of fini re days. I whisper golden flecks From off the broken frames, the tarnished guns, The birdcage of a sickly, yellow bird That sung until it stopped. My wicker chair I place among these gathered ghosts, and rock The noons to afternoons some ocher where Than now. The evening breeze begins to rasp And rattles through the brittle, tinder trees Along the silent house. And sweat dries cool Upon the grass where crickets gnash their knees. Wade Bentley graduated from BYU in English this August and is now a graduate student in English.