Forrest Rapier

Borrowing the Last Boat

​every line-ending borrows words from “The Last Boat” by Frank Stanford

Get in the boat, quick. In an
urgent second, he descends. No exile
cares what happens
after they leave town. Just to
prove you wrong, he’ll be
laughing by the floodwall, passing
in-and-out of focus. By
the way, you are the
last soul I wanted to see here. Winds
started picking up. He
is just another river rat who loved
darkening doorways before leaves leave
the trees, then the freeze. You know him,
don’t you? Cold
hands, eyes cold as
a church floor, the lines
in his arms recited
like hymns sung in
the afterdark service. Truth of the
matter is, you should forget his name,
whatever lies he said, let go of
his memory. Let your lamp go black, the
lighthouse go dark, let it all—let lord
take care of it. Nights and
nights glide worthless, forgettable as the
prayer you said last Sunday. Notorious
people always run by here, think the earth
doesn’t remember their pattern of
unforgivable acts, and his
pattern: one-in-the-same. His kind of country
takes care of two things: lying
and cheating. Come on in,
come back to sleep. Wait
up for all I care. What do you like?
Day’s going to come where a
woman
has your name written in an
envelope and her chest is an ambush.

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Forrest Rapier has poetry forthcoming in Freshwater Review, Dead Mule, LandLocked, and Levee. He has received fellowships from Looking Glass Falls, Sewanee Writers Conference, and has also held writing residencies at the University of Virginia and Brevard College. Former poetry editor for Greensboro Review and North Carolina Writers Network, he recently received his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where he now lives and hikes the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains.