David Troupes | Trespasses

Trespasses. Poems by David Troupes, selected by Ron Mohring as Number Five in Volume Ten of our Summer Kitchen Chapbook Series.

Release date:  August 31, 2022 [49 copies]
25 pages
$9.00

Cover: Antique 17th-century endpapers. 

David Troupes has recently returned to his native Massachusetts after fifteen years living in West Yorkshire, England. He has published two previous collections of poetry, and his work has appeared widely in journals on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to poetry, he produces a comic strip, Buttercup Festival, which can be read online.

House Plant

The light and height of our apartment,
the grief, and our little plant
thriving in the bay windows. Laundry

drying quickly because of the unstoppable furnace,
and our little plant thriving
in the heat, in the bay windows,

and a chimney running through,
inaccessible. Our scant
beloved artwork, and

our plant thriving in the bay windows,
the windows kept inch-open
even in the pit of winter,

the death-deep of it. And the rocking chair
my heirloom, and our well-watered plant
thriving as I sat and rocked

and looked out through sun
and scrims of mind, in the company
of the plant, the forward and forward of it,

the timepiece of each added leaf.
Our mattress on the floor.
Our acquiescence to the undertow voice.