Robert Beveridge – 2 POEMS

ALKALINE


amethyst on your chin
secret recipe for hot brown
last time you grocery shopped
brown leaves in the hall
state halfway between sleep
bottom of the bedsheets
last time Toto had a hit
movies released last Friday
wakefulness against your toe
maze of ice crystals
unbearable weight of your skin
frozen stacks of bills in the basement
life unexamined
scent of guava in Tiffin
last thing you need


* * *


LIVE AT NAPA STATE MENTAL HOSPITAL


I was thinking more about muscles
than I was about rockabilly
but the end result was the same,
two uncontrollable legs
and a pair of chopsticks
across the room, chili sauce
and shrimp splattered
on the wall. There has
to be some fiberglass around
here somewhere, my brain
conjures up out of nowhere
as my seat rockets backwards
and I head face first for the floor


* * *

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Blood and Thunder, Feral, and Grand Little Things, among others.
Social Media:IG: @ebolaisthesaviorDiaspora: shorturl.at/pqzRV

Glass for the Looking 
 
And daybreak lifts from the Pacific 
Like tracing paper from a hairdryer 
Low setting. 
There is not any living object 
Of this world that turns to you, 
Your honeycomb tiles 
In your desert/dessert—depends what day it is—citadel. 
Marram grass like wind-bent strands 
Of floss coloured olive gesticulate to a 
High tide 
Reacquainted with a rusting fringe, 
Flames for eyelashes 
Medium burn. 
A dribbling of gulls across the skyline — 
Gunned down from sight at sundown. 
 
Kindling has evaded all eyes of this day 
Eyelashes have entered 
Begrimed brown, 
Toes made unlovely 
Like those on ends of foot-bound quondam souls. 
Panache of catwalk like hollow death. 
I saw it all 
Or did I? 
A seascape for threadbare eyes looking out 
The window 
Of neither 
A glass of truth nor self-reflection. 
 
Then what?

RAUL DORN – I WROTE THIS LAST NIGHT

I wrote this last night.

“How ya doing?” asked a dear friend of mine yesterday. I told her that I felt like there was a room within me (as I patted my chest) where there’s a man crying, all day long. If it were the challenges and horror of the Pandemic alone, I’d tell myself that this is a rare potent time to create, to go within, to tap into the introspective blue. But if one feels empathy, it’s overwhelming. Another man in another room simply goes about making tea and speaking softly about hope while whispering the many names we have given God. Crying man sits unceremoniously at the end of the bed like the subject in a Edward Hopper painting, looking towards a wall that used to have a window. He’s predictable now and heavy company, so I don’t visit him often. I can see him from here. I get the internal nudge to create, to wake up from the inside out, to cultivate inner peace, to work to uncover truth, to protest in the streets, but I keep myself busy fixing everything around the house, my lists are long. I drink too much, smoke too much. Some nights it feels like everything is for nothing; that what was worth something wears only the clothes of memory. I’d like my life stirred, not shaken I murmur to myself as I wake in a dream. How does one care for one’s self when so deeply focused on caring for another? I place my ear up to the door of the crying mans room as I shove a love note beneath the door and wait.

Daughter Draws


"Can I watch Pokemon on phone?"
"No, draw a chair, colour something
on the papers lying on the table."


The long kitchen ends into a child drawn
rill trilling on the crags until its evanescence
means a lost picnic, a fishing rod streaming far.
"Cannot you draw anything else?"


She draws a Pokemon with father's face
down in the dirt flashed from the stroke
and sketches trees screaming and a bird
tired to be any bird specific reduced to a V.

~
A poet and a father, Kushal Poddar, edited a magazine – ‘Words Surfacing’, authored seven volumes of poetry including ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, ‘A Place For Your Ghost Animals’, ‘Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems’ and ‘Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel’. Find and follow him at https://www.amazon.com/Kushal-Poddar/e/B07V8KCZ9P

Cacti Fur

a poetry dry ground

Month: October 2020

Robert Beveridge – 2 POEMS

Joel Schueler – Glass for the Looking

RAUL DORN – I WROTE THIS LAST NIGHT

Kushal Poddar – Daughter Draws