Two poems by Nathan McClain (poetry, ’13)

An excerpt from “Aubade Ending with a Pacemaker,” one of two poems by Nathan McClain (poetry, ’13) published at The Rumpus:

 

 

Aubade Ending with a Pacemaker

It’s so easy, from the hotel’s twelfth floor,
to see the sheet of ice splinter, then drift

like continents on the river. From this height,
the snow flurries, doesn’t seem to fall at all. Maybe

it’s the trucks delivering meat (packed
in salt, I imagine), gliding slowly along

that make me think back on the La Brea
Bakery truck driver whose heart quit

at the intersection of Melrose and Western.
Paramedics listened to his chest. Blew

and blew into his mouth before he was wound
to a stretcher, rushed away—the truck, all […continue reading here]