October chill, but not now
her unexplored body like a
unraised objection withers
in the silence, the dead
rise from their beds as funeral vines
winding over stones, through cotton
no more utility
in their dry tongues
they will not touch
their domestic steps
move apart, she cannot
hold the lord of exits and is left
where she was felled, dainty as
a white-bellied petal underfoot
into the microphone, pink
in ASMR valentine, a wispy
stimulus, the other woman
lightly scraping shelled nails
across a dry palm leaf, she squeezes
her coin purse into the king’s ear
we hum the fruit of what
it all amounted to
Happy to have a few poems up at Rabbitbrush: A Literary Journal for Outsiders, Been a while since I had anything published for general public consumption outside of my little ol' blog :)
Be sure to check out their first issue.
Thank you Rabbitbrush!
snarling, smiling, human and non
and one leaf saying why must I be
yellow or green, dress me up
in cell phone blue, let me giggle
on a popcorn beach or befriend
geodes bathing in soapy lava
or let me nap on the tail of Godzilla
Azul, be careful who you listen to
some will say leaves are always green
and Godzilla doesn’t exist in poetry
but, here we are, a continent away
screwing up our eyes to see
the monster in your tree
and the world
trembling at his feet
i.
slow there, and here expand
common strands
run steep and wide, the strange
vocabulary very academic
like the smell of an ink pen
your finger, use it to trace
the craftsmanship of a cube
then cup the sphere
where you stand
strain and maintain, turn
to your neighbor and explain
the endless
compulsion to explain
ii.
fractions are soft, a loss
without total loss
the algebraic expression
is an opportunity to set right
the brokenness in the world, to reveal
and make known the exact question
know this and then gaze
into the brain of incarnation
a notion now in breathing meat
iii.
think of what you
expected to learn
this is the how
I leave you
to solve for why
