having a job sounds like a lot of work

I keep forgetting how to write cover letters and I
don’t have a CV or anything on account
of how much responsibility scares me. It shouldn’t though
because I already pay for my own Netflix
subscription and that’s what being an adult is
I think, that and taking my vitamins
when I wake up at 1pm.
I feel youngest when I’m being pushed around
near a playground while waiting for the curry I ordered.
I wonder what having sex with someone
I respect would be like.
I wonder what having sex with someone
I like would be like.
I think it’s maybe like having a job in that
I’m responsible for something and the higher-ups
keep asking for my references.
I want to be pushed around
but also left alone, if you can manage that.

Submit your work to Cacti Fur: cactifur.com/submit

Ant Spider Moth

Mid-June.
Ants line up like opening night.
They look like spilled beans.
One of them carries an entire fruity pebble
on his back. A yellow one to
be exact.
Well done, small thing.
How strong, how impressive.
What admirable work ethic.
Ant women should tell him that he is
a good man.
He should get a raise from the foreman.
His weekend night should consist of a
dining out. A show if he is
into that sort of thing.
A couple of drinks if he is so
inclined.
And a chance to retire because he
has lifted his colorful boulder and held
it.
He did his job.
Ant, you are your own hero. Your
own accomplishment, if only for that
one pebble.
Later that day, a spider has grappled
with a moth, and the spider has
gotten the better of that tussle.
The moth’s wings are soft but
he was bullied by the spider,
more physically minded.

Submit your work to Cacti Fur: cactifur.com/submit

Selenelion Oregon

The moon in the valley mist shimmies upon the Manor roof:

a lady dancing in a veil, gauzy and seductive,
in the space between night and day.

She
weaves
in
and
out
of my Venetian blinds.
I am alive in her blue light.

My words
play
hide
and
seek
between the slats of light.
I am alone
and you are so far away.

“Can you see the moon?

Does the desert dress her differently?

Does your heat rise to cradle her body
suspended in liquid sky?

Do her shards of light
slice
your
body
sleeping ‘neath the Pinyon Pine?”

I would be that light,
catching my hair on needles:
a shadow dancing on your tent wall:
The light
shimmering
from my fingertips,
caressing,
your face in sleep.

We are impaled with light,
the luminous flux,
spanning the Mogollon Rim to the Rogue Valley,
between Northwest Willow and Ponderosa Pine,
basking in her light bars: the earthlight cold in our morning breath,
inhaling air glow in the flutter of REM sleep.

She
sets
with
a
sigh,
a whisper of movement across your face,
gliding
down.
behind tall mountains.

In that moment:
Selenelion.
You and me on a horizontal eclipse.
A refraction of light fading to daylight
and then gone.
I am alone
and you
are
so
far
away.

Submit your work to Cacti Fur: cactifur.com/submit

Centipede

In early spring
a centipede crawls
across a branch
next to a bird’s nest
of blue eggs,
its segments aligned
like well-edited films
that seem so natural
to my eye.
It must be
a barely augmented
inspiration for
families or lovers,
moving separately
but together
through this tree,
and then forests,
pulled toward sunlight
and greenest leaves,
leaving behind
nests of blue eggs,
the chatter
of hungry robins.

Submit your work to Cacti Fur: cactifur.com/submit

Coping with Romanticism

My wife is gone, and Bruckner’s Fourth is on
full blast: Romantic’s what it’s called. A beer’s
in front of me, of course. The slabs of sound
build slow, misterioso: here on Earth,
the lovely ache of purple dusk or dawn.
I’m sad and happy all at once. My fears,
those briars binding me, an angel gowned
in light cuts through. The music swells: a birth,
a death, a glimpse of hell. Of heaven. Write
of life, my wiser muse suggests, as I,
brimmed full of bliss, glide fast from giddy height
to kitchen sink. Composed, I now know why
old Wordsworth counseled calm, tranquility:
advice to seekers of sublimity.

Find more of Thomas’s work on his website.

Submit your work to Cacti Fur: cactifur.com/submit

Friday morning

no shade is like my own
my leather chair
my birth
for what it’s worth I’m older now
and coming closer to the road
what hold do you have over me now?
Only in memory do your daggered whispers cut me
And that’s shunting off too
(to better shores).

No trade is like my own in words
it’s dew
over the mewling mouth
of eager does
whose hooves extend into my house
and yours

drink it
and fly

Submit your work to Cacti Fur: cactifur.com/submit