An ocean flutters from a flagpole,
A 3×5 slate blue ocean with dolphins leaping in and out.
This is the emblem
Of the country of my shadow.
My shadow is a princess.
She warbles,
Her tax code a filing system
Of feathers.
Beneath her flag I am wet.
My vision bordered by swaths of salt.
Here in Kansas oceans are special occasions,
And many rally around her flag,
Though they cannot swim.
Tag: poetry
Ekphrastic of a Life
A nuclear image of a girl constructed from trees
Blows apart a novel, a life, clairvoyant cinematography.
She sips from a waterfall,
Collects scraps of rain in her hair.
She rebels against rebels from every state of matter that matters
(Doesn’t all matter matter? A speck of glitter can cleave an eye).
With her breath fleeing north and her pheromones slipping south,
Nothing will ever be hot again.
Untitled Remembrance
I open the bright white box with the moon inside,
Clutch the lactescent, pock marked goodness
That remind me of when I lived in a joy ride.
The moon,
Eyelash light and chalky,
Crumbles in my embrace.
An Old, Good Idea
In the kitchen at the homey table
My hands read Molière.
Does the rain ever rise up?
The Prairie
The air on this prairie chases water,
Scrambling and wrestling in the brush with
The most minimal nuclei of cloud.
From the top of the bluff,
Hard work stares me down
Black eyed and stoic.
What will this land yield to me,
With my watering mouth,
My parched skin?
Once Bitten
Fireworks of pain in my fecund teeth
Advantageous chalkboards fill with unmoored drawings
In kid script
Of dragons and lagoons and devils.
Open red. See the wet birds waddle out cheep cheep.
Alarming threads sew me a bag for my head
In this titillating twilight.
Once I was 21 and I buried myself by a birch tree.
Then instantly I was 23 and I was born,
Having gestated under a plaid lamp.
I can barely bite but oh how I am bitten!
Hurt a cataclysmic light in my eyes.
The Scream – Poetry and Journaling
Midwest
Fuzzy snowmen smell like turpentine.
Why all this wistful wind,
this heavy quiet,
these creative snowmen dancing in slow motion
to no music?
Not inaudible music,
or even illegible sound,
but nothing at all-
Machines with no factory.
This snow covers a ghost city.
The children scattered and died.
Yes, I am freezing.
Would you like to dance?
December 28
Three feet behind Christmas
December 28 is trailing.
She needs a haircut desperately.
Her younger brother lives in New York.
Feted,
on the social circuit.
Dec 28 is sallow,
reminds her neighbors of a really long line.
I got her a job licking stamps at the unemployment agency.
No one sends her envelopes out.
Yet in her spare time she wins poker tournaments.
Her face hasn’t betrayed her in years.
Taming Lust
Bind me with rain,
Give me soothing comfort as
fraud from the driver between my legs
makes me hot and unclean
during sleep.
What strange guests await in the sea before the house,
gaudy on their local ships?
Give me good help and put me down
in the park.
Let me produce vines to depend on the place.
There is no sense of operation.
And the strangers come.
Their teeth have been refined.
Their hands are swift.
Miniature Moon 