THISTLES


I reckoned over thousands, obvious as eyeballs
from pastures watching my ambling the hill 
in boots too big—muddied tractor tracks

like cratered choices, the consideration of each
a difference between ankles twisted or passing safely over—
the rest, not obvious, like punji pits snared legs

and made the hacking out more desperate.
Thistles in summer, high as heads, sprung with purple 
flowers like nature’s trick of beauty 

or low as soles, stomped over with ease. Persistent, 
though it took no stomping, rather rooting 
with honed blades their grasping arms from dirt,

each one like tearing hair, taking two, three,
four or more blows measured to the base in red clay.
The rate was a nickel per thistle.

I never kept count, the blows too much, 
too much the green, too many thorns. I always got something 
like twenty bucks, and felt that fair enough, only eight 

years old and just as unaccustomed to money then as now, 
feeling something like purity in the labor of it, in the sweat
and inevitable blood of it; something like land-loyalty 

so the heaving after whiffing swings, striking some innocent patch 
of grass, trembled like love in the straining tendons of my wrists,
in the ache of muscle and shirts soaked through.

Something like love, and then, as now, it seems enough 
to keep me aching through the thrum of work, hoping 
maybe for the ice water welcome and well done

of praises sung; syllables of satisfaction
working like something primal, calming of body,
as if the words themselves foiled static, smoothed 

discordant melodies, rooting entirely what grew 
unnaturally in me, pricking always in the timbre
of thought, drawing blood.




ENIGMA


A man on the platform shouts and shadowboxes, rubs hands
together like there’s some secret he’s sputtering

in code about, laughing, the only one who understands, 
lifting hands in victory or swinging them wildly against unseen 

opponents vying in contest for whatever he’s got; and his lousy jab 
manages to keep away the curious or malign, visible and invisible—

like Tommy Hearns, tall and lanky, sparring with ghosts, swaggering 
back and forth, reluctant to throw in the towel.

He comes at me as I’m bent over my bag and I straighten, looking 
up to see he’s not actually looking at me, but out beyond,

mouthing something, not about change or food, but absurd
so I mumble a generic sorry man to get rid of him,

and he moves on to others along the platform, bewildered in their papers,
walking out of sight as the train comes rolling in. 

He appears, louder now, angry as if he were trying to make us understand 
but has forgotten the language, his code the only words he manages, 

even to himself so he spends his days laboring to say what’s inside,
squeezing out now and then some syllable in a surge,

swinging his limbs from subway poles like branches of trees
and between the legs of strangers—right now it’s Bitch 

and Nyquil—the keys maybe, so that I could plug Bitch 
and Nyquil into some decoding machine and meaning 

would come streaming through; relieved, maybe he’d stop
his wandering, known, finally, and heard like anyone else.

Joshua Kulseth earned his BA in English from Clemson University, his MFA in poetry from Hunter College, and his PhD in poetry from Texas Tech University. His poems have appeared and are forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, The Emerson Review, The Worcester Review, Rappahannock Review, The Windhover, and others. His poetry manuscript, Leaving Troy, was shortlisted for the Cider Press Review Publication Competition. His other books, both co-authored works of criticism and non-fiction—Agony: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and the Greeks, and W.H. Auden at Work: The Craft of Revision—will be appearing in print in 2023.