Travis Cebula


from Ithaca



Ithaca feeds a baby she
      feels behind muslin.

she pushes
      against the dark.   early,

it is early,
                early and the fog
      has not yet risen into steam.

        ^

her tears of molten Fall,

our great sweet mother comes
                nearer. all
      must go through women.

in the world, too,
                time will come. choking
      with memory,

her mouth sang that song to me,

                                                            father, if.

who for you when sad among strangers?
      I pray for you in my other years.

        ^

the blank daughters of memory
                shattered one livid flame.
      what’s left for us?

she forgot the place,
                that phrase the world remembered:
      a corpse-strewn spear.

the end had never been
      innocent.



Travis Cebula is an MFA graduate from the Department of Writing and Poetics at Naropa University (AKA The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics). He has previously published poems in New American Writing, BlazeVOX, The Talking River Review, Eleven-Eleven, The Strip, Whrrds, Bombay Gin, Dear Sir, The Bathroom, Fact-Simile, and Monkey Puzzle Magazine, among others.
 
 
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