Dave Malone


Missing You

If a southern wind comes up,
And Iowa fares hotter,
If a southern bird,
A long blue heron floats
Heavy in the sky,
If a thunderstorm piles in
From the Southwest,
Know that these are not omens
Of doom or ill weather.
Know that rain comes
When it is needed.


The Fourth Day

that you’re gone the coffee
is too weak.
The morning light
in the kitchen sits at the table,
heavy, hairy, and hungover.
Day three fit better
the coffee still strong, warm,
the morning, Minnesota cool,
and you were closer.
You had been here,
I could still smell you
in the folds of my robe.

-both poems previously published in Red Booth Review


Lover

I have heard of Gothic castles
thousands of square feet
of cold stone and velvet drapes.
There is a certain way you
drop your laugh.
It is the falling of a loose shirt
onto the stone floor
of a Gothic castle.

-poem taken from collection, Poems Of Love & The Body


3 Sycamore Poems

Looking at the stars,
I have one thought
where I’m holding you
until they disappear.
I heard you voice
in my piano
so I kept playing
until daybreak.
Without my whiskey
you seem so much more dull.
Thank you,
farmers of corn.

-poem taken my collection, Under The Sycamore


Sentence Finishers

are the worst.
They make these grand
assesses of themselves.
Truly they do-
te on each of us
as if we were dumb-
founded, which we are,
and their presuppositions
about us
I hate.

-originally published in Teaching In The Two-Year College