joe dahut / poem

Catching the Light

On my hands and knees

the crawdads played piano

with my plaited fingers and toes.

It was another kind of baptism.

The creek was dripping like a nosebleed

after a fight where no one bothered to push

their chairs in. They just got up and got to it.

It was around midnight when I felt the last drop

of her flask but I can’t remember much.

The fruit flies in a vinegar trap asked me

for a dollar, and spun like carousel horses

with their legs flexed in full gallop.

We made the bed that morning,

I caught the light and suffocated

it in a jar. It was like hooking a fish

who didn’t feel it yet. It was like sex

on a down bed, one feather

poking through.

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Joe Dahut is a poet and teacher in Brooklyn. A Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets nominee, his work has been published in North American Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Joe earned his MFA in Poetry from New York University, where he taught creative writing.