Issue > Poetry
Sam Barbee

Sam Barbee

Sam Barbee's poems have appeared in Poetry South, The North Carolina Literary Review, Crucible, Asheville Poetry Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology VII: North Carolina. His second poetry collection, That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53), was a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016. He is the current President of the North Carolina Poetry Society.

Feast


I rouse outside to whisper grievances and search
for a loving moon, but resist inclination to feast on it tonight:
my eyes squeeze tight in denial, but ease into squint.  

I do hunger, and perhaps will find it full and soft, easy to swallow,
not phased into a crescent rind: twin points ripe
with snags to choke me as before . . . another occasion when gnawed in regret.  

Magnetic shadows lure steeled light, sop streetlamps' gilded arc.
I venture to sanctuaries of a starlit world.  Appetite perks,
eager to disfigure all I once-worshiped whether

occasions or blessings, deliberate defacement of heaven and all her allies.
I suckle the moonless skyline's swirl-pink, dusk-brown,
night-gold, and imbibe shades of anything cold.

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