Thursday started with a gauzy sand bar sky
The LED sun yawning widely over the horizon
Today, like every work day, the ideas blackboard
Streaked with years of smudgy lessons, the surviving
Word “catch” or was it “batch” down in the corner,
Avoiding erasure. No products appeal,
Or really matter, maybe you can market
But you can’t pawn the sunrise
Which easily eclipses the mind when it’s wrapped in a
Tortilla, so chewy, like yesterday‘s disappeared stanzas.
Aspiring light has no goals, just a paper route,
Delivering holograms of unconfined content,
Another daily batch, today’s fresh catch.
Checked blue surface of a gauzy sand bar sky.
– Michel Krug
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Therefore, I am
Prostrate before the moon and the sun
And the rain that followed, once again
The moon, the sun, and the rain that followed,
Once again
And forever more, I fear
For the flame that burnt my hands and eyes,
Charred the snow-hearted and scalded their brothers
Lay covered in earth, in ash, in suffocating pitch
Starved of fuel more potent than a prone body, prostrate before the moon
And the sun
And the rain that followed, once again
As I watch it fall, from clouds of nothing
– Izzy Fishbach
Author’s Note: Philosophers of all persuasions have spilled much ink debating whether it is possible to know that one exists, and if so, how to prove it. This poem is the opposite of that: it suggests that we don’t exist at all.…
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Fishermen are good at sea.
Strong arms, pull steady sails
In shifting wind,
In storm.
Rudders for left hips guid straight to streams pregnant with catch, so they may cast their nets in place of incantations.
Heave!
And here’s the day—easy. The water like a looking glass, they sit upon white decks watching the world. Fishermen are very good at sea.
When beached, the ground moves under them. Confident steps slide, awkward and uneven. The air too warm, the wind too dry. The sea just there, and not.
They’re caught
Right on the precipice of life—free to stare, but not enter.
There, they mend their nets. Knit fingers bloody, set gaze upon the sand. Bottle up complaints—though that part’s harder. They wake and walk and sleep, all on flat land and adrift, with only God for anchor.…
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as a ship in a bottle
believing every wooden piece
a symbol of something
that can be shaped.
I see each fragile word nestled in your
lined fingers being carefully homed.
Eyes straining, focusing,
anything can be built despite
the small opening.
You laugh
when I tell you the ship
will never sail.
My words, random particles,
amass to nothing.…
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I used to be jealous of the rising tide, for it could never leave
Just lap at jagged teeth and spray its foam upon your sleeve
My blindness felt the seagulls flee, their mocking heard no more
Yet still the tide, it rose in time, to crash on rocky shores
I know why the kestrel races, on the hunt for freckled faces
In the beaches, ports, and harbors, raving for its saving graces
In the alleyways, for forty days, I heard them caw
In the burning trees, I heard their pleas, their throats so raw
I swore the birds, they never rest, for land and earthly law
Don’t much apply in cyan sky and clench of vulture’s jaw…
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I’ve seen her fragmented,
with pupils swollen, overfilling to black,
not mourning the absence of color.
My neck tilts—revealing
her skull to be a collection of shards.
Yet, always her mouth curls up,
the corners pointed to satisfaction.
Tonight, the moon strikes her.
Rotted prisms bark back at me.
I peel along my damaged skin,
scraping the imperfection,
hoping my blood gives her new life.…
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The moon’s gaunt and narrow.
…………..They say our corridor through life’s
…………..measured by the moon.
…………..Slim as a tunnel, I tuck my legs under my knees.
Pat scratches licks on the rosewood,
…………..strumming them in fragments of silk and nylon.
…………..Three-Part Rasguedo, Golpe,
…………..Rumbagitana.
…………..He plays.
Fire-starting calluses, fireboard,
…………..spun Mullein, none of these items
…………..are amazed by their use. In the circle dance,
…………..my back foot scratches the dust.
Farruca, the wild form, mournful Soleares,
…………..the tragic Segurias.
…………..He adjusts his segilla,
…………..demonstrates Tarrantas y Tarrantino,
…………..its dramatic turns and contemplative open rhythm.
Rising into the horizon.
…………..I hear the shuffle of leaves in the Sequoia,
…………..the rattle of rain upon the green roof.…
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