Jacob Schepers

Graveside Pilgrim in Sackcloth and Lip Gloss

And alien tears will fill for him
            Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men
And outcasts always mourn.
—Oscar Wilde, from “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

I’m here laying down my oar
to settle among a meadow folk

escaping choppier waves for the gentlest roll

I’ve tossed my roses upon matadors

my panties at rock gods
my cookies after lunch

I counted out my fare for a Stygian ferryman
ahead of time just as my knack for calling

a chicken a chicken

even as it stews in its amniotic bath

I build now a house of flower stems & sand
to test the strength of transience

I wear down the sharp edges of every neighbor’s
ziggurat

blending them into the background vistas
I don my mourning dress each time I visit Paris

My first & last stop—my only—is this kiss-

stained tomb

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Jacob Schepers is the author of A Bundle of Careful Compromises (Outriders Poetry Project, 2014). His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Dialogist, The Greensboro Review, Harpur Palate and Heavy Feather Review. He teaches at the University of Notre Dame and, with Sara Judy, he edits the poetry journal ballast. More at www.jacobschepers.com and @JacobSchepers