BAND-AIDS DON’T HEAL SCARS, I DO.

The invisible man was 
anything but, with his face
all covered in bandages.

Neither was I
In the small years of school.

Band-aids on my 
cheeks and chin and forehead
proclaimed my nervous habit

of picking at the scabs 
of my fears and worries.

Like him, I was a sight.
His scars, strips of linen.
Mine latex, cotton, adhesive.

We wept at the
frustration of being seen

so conspicuous and﹘
you just know﹘
raw under there.

We knew it was the only way
some days for us to be
out and participate.

Together, in separate rooms,
we cried at night

heaving clenched fists
toward the floor, 
onto tender thighs,

And against the 
the indifferent plastered wall

and we both told God 
through clenched teeth 
with tear-brined tongues

Just how little 
we cared or believed.

HATCHET MAN

Her nest of hair rides
high and gray and wily, not 
so much from style as a lack.
Both it and she unfettered
by qualm or care, 

free and easy as wind chimes
of retired green glass bottles.

Even her convictions are winds
blustering northerly or southerly 
with mood and circumstance
respectively.

On some nights, she finds 
her way to a basement cafe
all twilit by low watt edisons
and a skin-oil patina on the bar and,
swaying from one intoxicant or another, 
takes in the dark tempos of
rare and mundane words alike.

Tonight, there’s a man, 
her junior by years yet no spring 
chicken, no step-spring left.

He’s got his own gray and wily thing
going on, reminding witnesses that
looks aren’t for much besides looking
and that low clouds can
carry more than shade or rain
to affect senses of moment and place. 

“Only actions”, he says, “and promises kept 
speak to value and character.”

And he is here speaking his.
And there, he goes on 
thrumming, drum-kicks 
on the floor with his heel
chomping out syllables
and chopping at air
with an open palm

like a hudson bay axe
splitting and spitting truth
into splintered words that rhyme

but do little else.

HERE, IN THE FLOODPLAIN

Here in the floodplain where
sand dominates the soil
we grow wildflowers and
sit on red bricks

spines bent over books while a 
pig and some dogs push 
their noses around our
tiny plot of land.

The house has been settling too.
Cinders slight downward with 
every hundred passes
of trucked tons of earth 
from down the street where
a big box store will be.

You can roll a marble
south to northwest on our kitchen floor
as reliably as you can find 
the round desiccated things
that journeyed beneath
the refrigerator

like seeds of small, hidden projects
which threaten to grow into
expensive realities
of pine and copper 
and steel and plywood.

At eight feet above the
sea and not more than a
crow-flying mile from the
compulsive waves we get
to feel a part

right outside our door, when 
the wind carries a faint drone 
whispering salt
or, when it rains angry

and the tide is in
water table riding high
and we sit and look 
At the moat in the yard.

That’s when we (and a pig and 
some dogs) all
cloister ourselves,
each in their own space, to nest
and burrow and close our eyes
for a time.

Logan Garner is a poet of place whose roots lie in the Midwest and on Oregon’s north coast. Recipient of the 2023 Neahkahnie Mountain Poetry Prize, his writing has been featured in The Elevation Review, Flying Island, The Salal Review, The North Coast Squid and other print and online journals. His first collection, Here, in the Floodplain, was published by Plan B Press in 2023.