Three Poems (February 20, 2011. Issue 25.)
Central Nervous System
It’s the way all the limbs move.
The coordination of a nervous system
spilling signals
carried out
with such revolting efficiency.
Even after you kill a silverfish
sever one end from the other
the thread-like legs continue to sway
through the air with eerie calibration,
saying “We do not move
for the body of this life,
our orders come
from something much bigger.”
The rhythm haunts my memory
all pieces moving as one.
The legato
of the silverfish
drifts along the periphery of my vision.
I keep seeing it,
legs like so many Latin roots
squirming in ways impossible to forget
writhing subconscious
I want to vomit
everything relevant
I want to think of anything else
as appendages churn, I’m trying to see through
ghostly undulations
replaying ocular shadows
the floaters on my eyes know nothing,
or is it everything? They run
when I try to look
and will never let me judge them fairly.
The Soul Escapes Through the Mouth
I
There was no one close enough
to make out the words cried from the landing before
he bolted down the street,
carrying only a passport, a few dollars
and the thirty-one years he had accumulated
in his pocket.
He passed her for the last time at the corner.
He kept running.
Trying to yell a farewell
as his eyes met hers,
a car found his hips
and his hips found the street,
and his eyes found the street
where the words fell from his lips.
II
He sat at the bar on his twenty-first birthday,
smoking,
seven drinks scaling the nerves to his brain.
All his friends were talking but he couldn’t hear them clearly, so
he just let the smoke slide from between his lips, how
the soul escapes through the mouth
while someone clapped him on the back and
congratulated him yet again
for something he had no control over.
III
He knew the truth when he was seventeen. He loved her,
and would marry her one day.
She was going on about
how the eyes were the window to the soul
until she stopped speaking to stare into his,
as if her future was written there.
He didn’t want to say anything that could ruin the moment,
so he just returned her gaze.
She kissed him
and he knew that a part of himself
now belonged to her,
that something had passed.
The Hunter
People like to start things off with a bang:
fireworks, lights flashing when the ball finally drops,
a kiss, as the clock is overlaid with fresh zeroes.
I’ve never been one for spectacle;
I know that one sharp moment is often more memorable
but sets up a standard the rest of our seconds can’t live up to,
tears a beautiful gap in our hearts
that makes everything else an afterthought, merely
something to staunch with, to make up for what we think should be there.
I watch safely from a distance. My cell phone is a lighthouse,
a solid point that can weather the storm
and a place others will always know to find me.
The soft click of the other end
hanging up
is like a gunshot from afar.
I leave the beacon on just in case
and travel to where I heard the sound,
from deep in the forest.
The hunter flew from the scene in the night,
left me searching the earth floor for injury
slowly, with the gentle hands of someone
who had been here before.
In time I find the deer
on its side, bullet hole leaking
the shiniest darkness there is.
I sit beside the creature and do it the favor of listening.
I listen to its lungs struggle
I listen to its confusion
I listen to its pitiful whining as I try my best to tend to the wound.
I will keep the deer alive so long as I am able.
Back in the city
their voices count from ten down to one,
then silence,
as their mouths are now occupied
with the blood flowing fresh
every year. |