The Judas Tree

Vincent Hostak

August 14, 2022

I cling to the old words I often cannot find

Times were, I raged

paced up and down the stories of this house

tipped my head to hear

mouse-tongued songs murmuring from floorboards

only to race away too soon

through passive vents and the holes I failed to patch

I strain to reach a pitch I cannot hold

Like the songs from tented desert shrines

ancient Mihskin temples with goat hair walls

where verses aligned with sacred smoke

kibbitzed in the plumes and 

were lost to potent crackling limbs

the last of dew choked from the Judas Tree.

I long for names I often cannot call

It is not that these are forbidden

nor even affirm some unnamed gods

nor disclose a secret well

nor map to epic stories of diverging plains

With this same fever, I fell exhausted in the garden bed

the one I forgot to cultivate this year

I dreamed of all the things that perish unnoticed

a bristle-backed drifter that curled beneath my spine

green cowlicks tangled in the maidenhair

a scrap of pelt the splintered border snagged

My loose and dreaming mind

flirted freely with the unsigned world

I babbled out the names I will soon forget

but knew each entity was owed.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.