JEFF EWING, "LAZY EYE" (Issue 16)

LAZY EYE

It sees what it wants and what it doesn’t

it doesn’t—ignores, for instance, the
host face striated as bristlecone bark,
a lentigo tracing the Caspian shore.

General outlines are noted, an overall
impression glazes the retina—a shoebox
diorama holding me fast, leaden feet
glued in the shade of q-tip trees. Doing

the work of two with half-assed effort,
it leaves most depths unplumbed:
What do you see that I don’t, squinting
into the poorly delimited sun?

At night, beads well and fall—I find
them in the morning distilled to crystals.
In trade, the Jewelry and Loan grants
me three wishes I expend for: a glyptic

of seasons turned with loving obsession,
a quart jar preserving the last outcast
breath of the last arctos californicus,
and in rubicund Cambrian amber a photo

of us on the South Rim framed by an
uncertainty no perfect eye can fathom—
rock and pinyon, and the river far below
fogged by unspeakable distance.

ABOUT THE POET

Jeff Ewing is a writer from northern California. His poems and stories have recently been published or are forthcoming in ZYZZYVA, Willow Springs, Catamaran Literary Reader, Atlanta Review, Saint Ann’s Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Dunes Review, ELJ, and Bridge Eight. He lives in Sacramento, CA with his wife and daughter.

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