Chapman Hood Frazier

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Sign of the Crab in the Night Sky

Each night my body lies in this elasticity of space, a doll’s face with closed eyes.

Frost and starlight, twilight’s twin signatures of nuance and promise
lie beneath a diadem of stars above the bone moon.

By morning, the sky is so blue it’s almost black in this long contraction of light.
The constellation of the crab lifts a white-bottomed claw above this blind horizon

where everything is grasp and release.  My blue, stone-like face once pushed
out between your thighs. Now, your purpling hands lie crossed beneath a blanket.

Nothing is forgotten, though nothing remains nor needs to. In the evening
smoke hangs after the funeral; a single word floats like ash in the air.

Each burned word, tinged black, almost readable.

Chapman Hood Frazier’s The Lost Books of the Bestiary was published in 2023. His work has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Southern Poetry Review, The South Carolina Review and other publications. Several poems have won awards from the Poetry Society of Virginia and his “Conversations with Contemporary Poets” interviews with poets from the US and Northern Ireland have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicles, Agni Online and Shenandoah. Currently a Professor Emeritus from James Madison University, he lives in Rice, Virginia and co-manages Bellfield Farm LLC, a writer’s retreat.