Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Convertiendse en Characoteles / Sorcerers Changing into Their Animal Forms (detail), 2013, oil on canvas. Arte Maya Tz’utujil Collection.
12 Lines After Leadbelly
Moaning is the minute
between dusk and dark, the first stars,
barely a breeze, a dead
armadillo drying by the road,
the day’s cotton picked,
a blood-blistered finger,
a blind man
led across town by thirst,
one side of the bed
still empty, a silhouette
slipping out the back door
as blue goes black.
Jason Labbe lives in Brooklyn, works for Simon & Schuster, and plays drums and percussion with various recording and performing projects around the Northeast. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Connecticut Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, AGNI, The Nebraska Review, Quarterly West, and Sycamore Review, among others.