When you tell me you are writing about your heart, ask me for metaphors in triplicate, I suggest cake, sedimentary rock, the earth’s boiling core, knowing that your sadness is beyond the power of written language. The chanting of indigenous rainforest tribes might capture the essence of your suffering.
When you drive to Mississippi because your lungs are crowded with Midwestern flora and fauna, persistent mold that grows in viper tongues and slithers into the basement while you sleep, I know your family doctor has pills, breathing treatments, the right tone of voice to assuage the fire in your chest.
When you buzz my phone at five in the morning, with descriptions of coffee, hungry dogs, weather forecasts, admonitions to eat eggs, I breathe easier, knowing that I wait for other words. …
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On a bike. On a path. In the woods. Just rained.
Mud always sprays all around like the spotted redness of horror films especially when I twist the handlebars, curve the back wheel around at a sharp curve. This isn’t just a digging into the bowels of nature. We spray everything, marking each thing as ours. Every object. A tree, a path, this food, that animal, this person, that person, this idea, that philosophy. If it isn’t ours yet, it will be soon. And everyone acknowledges our conquest.
Our tracks are impossible to hide. If others follow our lead, they will find us. Even if we try to hide. They tread over the tracks. Even after a dry spell, the treads are the most natural pattern we know.…
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Somewhere between these fantasies
of ocean parting eyed angels
and this swipe left swipe right
ephemeral bullshit
is the real thing
and if you’ve felt it
you know it isn’t special
and it isn’t different
and it isn’t anything new
but it is love
and it’s yours
and it’s heavy
and dirty
and drunk
walking barefoot down the street
sharing lips on a cigarette
snoring
with terrible breath in the morning
but you kiss them anyway.
– David Lukas…
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We saw it painted orange
and filling with smoke.
The walls upended and rode
gravity to the earth—
the people followed suit.
They lifted their hands
to fan the smoke
but drowning the fire
wasn’t in the cards.
We tried to brace
the stonework
on our backs,
we tried to lay the bricks
again. The broken men
became ghosts and buried
their own bodies. We left
the rubble behind.
We washed our hands of it.
– Amanda Stovicek…
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My vision today
Transcends that of all before
And still I seek more
I witness colors
You cannot identify
Nor could even name
Virgin resonance
That you denote only as sound
Enriches my ears
And taste: such richness
Cascades across my palate
So effortlessly
Each is alien
And equally elusive
And always will be
Haiku was never my strong-suit. It never had to be. Five syllables, then seven syllables, then five syllables have a Zen quality about it. I would like to tell you I wrote the poem, but I didn’t. Not in the normal sense. What I did was collect the words already suspended in the ether and arrange them in a pattern acceptable to the reader. No pen or paper. Neither a dictionary nor thesaurus. …
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– dedicated to Larry Fagan
If I find
your bones, one day,
caressed by time
and cradled
by your children’s
handprints,
I will know
them for the laughter of others
reverberating within.
With words
still unknown,
I will whisper
my admiration,
my worship
and my sorrow
into their hollow.…
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We drive this turnpike across the length
of Pennsylvania for the hundredth time, as I
look through the smudged
windshield where my footprints are seen
when the light allows.
The highway is a barrier,
the laundry behind it waves in the sun—
a dimple on the day’s face.
Things I can’t see: evaporation—the exit—
the floating up; the invisible water christens
itself into cloud, chanting:
I am one of you now
I am one of the heavy places that hold it all together
until I can’t…
There is the welcoming, dry earth; the ill-timed
clothes, pinned up; a summation
of someone’s life, up against the interstate.
We are viewers perched in front of the exhibition,
there are people standing against
large, red trucks—making O’s with their mouths
for cigarettes, before they blink past;
And then more laundry, hard with that sun-tiredness,
but dotted with the dark spots of the moment above.…
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