2 poems

By David Anson Lee

The Clinic at Dusk

Between the fluorescents and the snow,
the nurse hums something ancient:
a tune for mending what light forgets.

Charts murmur in their drawers,
the ventilator sighs like a tired god.
Outside, salt trucks drift through the blue hour,
their spinning lights baptizing the roads.

I wash my hands until the skin dreams of wind.
The sink steams like a winter horse.
On the mirror: fog and memory,
I almost see them:
the ones who left
still waiting in the reflection’s hush,
names dissolving like gauze in water.

Evening arrives wearing its white coat.
We write its vitals down,
pretend the world is still chartable.

Rust Belt Psalm

The train lumbers through the valley,
its iron lungs wheezing psalms
for every mill that fell asleep mid-sentence.

Men once hammered daylight into shape here,
their hands black with prayer and promise.
Now weeds bloom through the factory gates,
each stem a green rebellion.

Children fish with bent nails for hooks,
their laughter ringing in the rust.
A heron startles from the shallows,
wings like torn blueprints of faith.

Even the steeple leans closer to hear
what the river keeps repeating:
nothing ends, it just rusts differently.

And still,
beneath the water’s ruined hymn,
a single trout flashes silver:
a small, surviving hallelujah.