SHREDS

    Where old leaves swirl, and painted crosses
mark more still, see
    how the pick-ups congregate, and the wash,
foot-deep, spreads field

    into field, where these four deer, grazing,
deal themselves, oblivious,
    among the freeze-drying, disheveled stalks,
in this iced Advent say,

    midway to exhaustion.  So the truck-hauled firs
a company sends as compensations
    shape moods no less than promise or appeal,
no less a clear-cut argument,

    than denim, studs, than this one's tall-heeled
leather and surprises,
    adjusted to the light they'll make much of
before it's over,

    these air-brushed notables, about as far tonight 
from sugar-drinkers as imagined,
    from versions of themselves broadcast,
brutalized, despite

    the tools and tolls and spoils, the stiffening
shreds of all
    the winter midnight's desecrations,
or this moonlight

    lingering, over the tables 
formalized.  





Nearly 800 of Robert Lietz’s poems have appeared in more than one hundred journals in the U.S. and Canada, in Sweden and U.K, including Agni Review, Antioch Review, Carolina Quarterly, Epoch, The Georgia Review, Mid-American Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, The Ontario Review, Poetry, and Shenandoah.  Seven collections of poems have been published, including Running in Place (L’Epervier Press,) At Park and East Division (L’Epervier Press,) The Lindbergh Half-century (L’Epervier Press,) The Inheritance (Sandhills Press,) and Storm Service (Basfal Books).  Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems.