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.

 

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Read more "POETRY: Barbara A Meier – Selenelion Oregon"

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.

 

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Read more "POETRY: Richard King Perkins II – Centipede"

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.

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Read more "POETRY: Thomas Zimmerman – Coping with Romanticism"

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

 

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Read more "POETRY: Robin Wyatt Dunn – Friday Morning"

 

Houdini and Picasso

 

The egg yolk moon had a grip
on the obsidian sun horizon
all dissonant focus blurred

Telling her he had a taste for
sushi was Quick’s big mistake,
her lady friends responded
to his innocent intention

They thought of him as a
cannibal of love, their relation-
ship took a tragic detour

At a reading one night he said,
“I’m going to feed my voice to
you with a silver spoon, my jaded
words will fill your mind until
you explode like Mount Vesuvius”

“Ownership is a passing storm cloud,
your possessions own you, all things
are borrowed, rented, or stolen”

“Kiss me goodbye, baby girls, don’t
look for me, I’ll be in the shadows,
I’ll always love you, I just can’t take
you, I’m going Houdini”

That night Quick woke up and his
lady had grabbed and clamped down
on his tongue with vice grips, she sliced
it off with an electric turkey knife, her dog,
Picasso swallowed it like a juicy treat.

 

Check out more of Catfish’s work in his chapbook Buffalo Nickels (2014), published by Grandma Moses Press.

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Read more "POETRY: Catfish McDaris – Houdini and Picasso"

 

Physical Library

 

The sexual demands of this body have been shelved:
Those desires have been relegated to the basement

Among the etiquettes, the out-of-date cartographies,
long-expired geographies and computer science texts

Filed in the Dewey system as “Ancient History,”
“Museology,” and “Not Assigned or No Longer Used,”

Discarded, dormant, card pulled from the worn oak catalogue
Until I notice this smile, those perfect imperfect teeth.

Then my whole physical library is unshelved, askew, open
All the pages I locked away.

 

Visit Jessica’s website at www.jessicalindsley.com, and follow her on Twitter: @LindsleyJess.

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Read more "POETRY: Jessica Lindsley – Physical Library"

 

Three-toed Sloth Love

 

Couldn’t
we
just
do
a
quick
ie
this
time
she
whisp
er
ed
slow
ly
in
his
arous
ed
fur
ry
ear
while
hang
ing
from
the
same
lush
branch.

 

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Read more "POETRY: Ed Higgins – Three-toed Sloth Love"

 

In the Water House

 

Water boards keep wheat grass nails growing
I keep the walls free of eddies
of water spiders too
A vapor trail rises from the chimney
Down the stairs I glide
a canoe for slippers
a paddle for a cane
Trigger fish in the hallway
koi in the windowsill
As one summer
rotates into another
I roll on parquet waves
in otiose slumber
The telephone’s sunk
Sunsets blanch
Rings rise in colorful bubbles
and die in quiet splashes

 

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Header image: detail from The Koi Conference by Jo Staley.

Read more "POETRY: Tim Staley – In the Water House"