Radio

A little dog someone has left 
Tied to a garden fence
Lies down in the sunburnt grass 
And immediately commences 

Making minute adjustments to 
The dishes of its ears, 
Tuning into frequencies 
That I will never hear. 

Event Horizon

At the reservoir’s glass bottom,
A sticky residue 
Is all that remains of a bottle 
Of something green in hue,

Which made me so besotted 
It left a great abyss 
Like a terrible black dot
Where time does not exist. 

Selectric

For knocking off a final draft, 
Nothing beats the rat-a-tat
Blast of a semi-automatic. 

Sprung

The hundred clocks of April 
Strike the hour at once, 
Scattering the flighty 
Treetops like a gun;

Shattering the silence,
Clanging on and on;
Clamoring like children;
Shivering like gongs;

Splashing like a raindrop;
Surging like a throng;
Sending out their singing 
Bird automatons;

Springing up like flowers; 
Showering like stones; 
Ringing like an un-
Attended telephone. 

Upward Mobility

The bricks as they have grown apart
Have drawn a secret stair
Beginning at the building’s floor 
And ending in thin air,

Where someone’s laundered linen waves 
And dances in the breeze
Above a darkened alleyway
Between two one-way streets. 

Thrift

On one side, people feasted 
On mounds of low-priced junk, 
Gorging themselves like beasts 
On stale and moldy hunks; 

On the other side, they waited 
In line, their bloated trunks 
Bursting with chewed up waste,
And took turns blowing chunks. 

Ardath Bey

The glint between the barely parted 
Eyelids first, like distant stars,
Or candles swamped in seas of tar, 
Grows brighter slowly — small, twinned sparks
Fanned by the words a man has started 
Speaking; and though the dusty heart 
No longer beats, the dry lips part
In an awful moan, devoid of art 
Or meaning; he moves; the other darts 
For safety, screaming — it isn’t far 
Enough; more screams; the screen goes dark. 

Lohse

Abandoned in unplanned-for haste, 
As if before a storm, 
The houses, he would later say, 
Had seemed to him “still warm.”

Half-eaten meals congealed on plates;
The children’s toys lay strewn
Haphazardly across the floors
Of freshly silenced rooms. 

He took the silverware and tossed
The Torahs in the fire.
He took the paintings from the walls 
And left some hooks and wire. 

He even took the furniture, 

The better to enjoy 
The skill of the Old Masters as
The owners were destroyed. 

The Gnat

There is some kind of gnat 
Drowning in what 
To it must seem a vat 
Of wine, but which in fact 
Is merely a glass, 
And half full at that. 
Half empty, perhaps, 
If you are the gnat. 

Earthworks

They lie atop
The giant mounds 
Of earth like giant 
Crumbling crowns 
Upon the furrowed,
Weathered brows
Of ancient kings
Who lie here now,
Beneath the hills,
And wear them still. 

Rejection

Thank you for your interest 
In Tomorrow’s Free Domain. 
Unfortunately, everything 
We publish is the same 
Old garbage, and we didn’t 
Recognize your name. 
Please consider paying us 
To submit your work again. 

~ The Editors 

Orbital Resonance

I saw the rings of Saturn once —
Albeit from a distance:
A record etched with grooves to which 
The universe was listening. 

The circle past the dead wax lacked 
A label or a name, 
Though neither was it strictly speaking 
Absolutely plain. 

It must have been an opera 
Or something else thematic
If even from so far away 
It sounded so dramatic. 

Doom Scrolling

These birds lined up upon the fence 
In different attitudes,
Presented as they are against 
Papyrus sunset hues,
Compose a vaguely ominous, 
Anonymous cartouche.

Sunset Crater

Like giant sticks of dynamite 
Blown out at either end,
The trees lie lifeless on their sides
Atop the blackened sand —
Between the great gunpowder hills 
That dot this blasted land. 

Bright Ideas

Whereas without encouragement
(Was ever word more apt?)
The keg (to keep the metaphor
From drink) is hard to tap;
And often, even if somehow 
You manage, in a flash,
You’ll find you’ve tapped the powder keg,
And turned it all to ash. 

The Art of Composition

In hollow hoots the wind evokes 
Soft music from a bottle’s throat — 
And all I have to do is take 
Another drink, to change the note.

Riot

Rebuked by every rock
And waving blade of grass,
The pitchfork-wielding trees
And the white-hot wrath

Of the sun’s fiery torch, 
I cower and fall back 
Behind the castle doors,
And make the latches fast; 

And huddle in a corner, 
And pray the storm will pass; 
And cover up my ears
To mute the breaking glass. 

Matrix

The rain of ones and zeroes 
Beyond the window screen, 
As in a magic mirror, 
Resolved itself at three 

Into a bright but bleary
Bucolic blend of green 
And blue and yellow queries
Of questionable meaning. 

Whispering Gallery

 — St. Paul’s Cathedral, London

The moment they are uttered 
The whispers in this vault 
Flutter up to the ceiling 
Upside-down and fall 

Asleep wrapped in their wings
Like bats, or backwards leaves
Returning to their branches,
And rustle in the breeze. 

Merlin’s Cave

The waves that pried it open this dark maw
Swallows now in a never ending yawn
That stretches from the Haven to West Cove 
Beneath the ruined castle far above. 

The last few rock hewn steps that used to reach 
The threshold at low tide washed out to sea, 
So those who would must clamber carefully 
Down boulders slick with algae to the beach. 

But now the tide is rising, and the sun 
And cave like kindred spirits have begun
To set. Before too long they’ll both be gone, 
And you will say that this is just a song. 

Meditation in an Emergency

Of course it’s sad when someone’s house 
Is burning down, smoke billowing 
From every door and window in
A parody of a girl about 
To blow her lid; of course it is 
No laughing matter; I submit,
However, if among the crowd
Of gawkers in their dressing gowns,
There is a poet, they would be 
Remiss in failing to point out 
The beauty of the cherry red 
And chrome emergency machines
Lining the lane; the flashing lights; 
The iridescent water like 
A rainbow arching from the gleaming 
Nozzles of banana yellow
Hoses; or the ladder leaning 
Up against a passing cloud, 
As if the fellow at the top 
Right now, we’re bartering with God. 

Black Frock Coat

Fluttering out around him 
Bat-like as he leapt 
Dramatically from balcony 
To stage and staggered; swept 

Up off of his knees 
As he raised his dagger high,
Declaiming to the audience, 
“Forever thus to tyrants!”

Streaming like a flag 
Retreating from the fray
As turning on his heels he fled
The bloody scene, afraid;

Clinging to his back
As he galloped through the night; 
Pillowed underneath his head 
In dawn’s unblinking light;

Spattered with his blood 
Beneath a burning barn;
Spread out, useless, like his hands 
That day at Garret’s farm. 

On an Antique Iron Wall Sconce

Out of this basket    a bright bouquet
Of orange fire    like flowers flamed
Each day at dusk    in days of old. 
Now only the rose    of rust remains,
Whose parched petals    peel away 
And fall to the floor    in russet flakes 
The next strong wind    will sweep away. 

Chauvet

Emerging like a sculpture 
From a canvas carved from stone,
A herd of charcoal horses churns 
The dust to blood and bones.

The torchlight this illusion 
Makes even clearer still, 
As from the flames the tossing manes 
Appear to gather will.

They thunder past on hooves 
Whose clap has not been heard 
Since darkness rode the mountain down 
In clouds of snorting earth. 

Job Description

Is easily distracted, lazy, prone 
To flights of fancy; can’t be counted on; 
Is often sullen, selfish and withdrawn;
Has few friends and prefers to play alone;
Skips classes often; never turns in homework;
Is overly and quite overtly fond 
Of members of the other sex; responds 
To criticism poorly; takes a tone 
Of disrespect with elders, which includes 
All teachers; has no use for institutions 
Of higher learning; steadfastly refuses 
To take direction; does not follow rules; 
Lies outright or exaggerates the truth;
Obsesses over meaningless minutiae. 

Orphans

Written after viewing the “Acoustic America” exhibit at the Musical Instruments Museum.

Supine in their cases;
Propped upright on stands; 
Suspended in the air like wraiths; 
Or in the outstretched hands 

Of fragile racks, the fiddles, 
Banjos, mandolins, 
Guitars with nicknames, basses, little 
Ukuleles limned 

In legend long for players 
To cradle them and sing,
And teach them how to say their prayers, 
And brush their knotted strings. 

Tumbleweed

Perambulating cloud
Of dust and tangles going down 
The sidewalk like a brawling crowd 
In comic strips, or Charlie Brown’s 
Buddy Pig-Pen now.

MS. Found Throttled

Dear Sir, there is a gentleman you know 
Beside me here, at Ryan’s Fourth Ward polls, 
Who goes by the cognomen Edgar Poe.

Admitted 5 pm on 3 October. 
As soon as I was able, I went over. 
Excitable . . . delirious . . . not sober. 

Saturday night commences calling, “O
Reynolds! Reynolds! Reynolds!” until say oh
Three o’clock Sunday morning, when he goes 

Into a stupor endlessly misquoted. 
Perhaps this current leads to the South Pole. 
Of course, there is no certain way . . . oh no. 

October’s War

Season of butterflies 
Colliding in mid-air
And spiraling to earth 
To smolder brightly there; 

Of noxious clouds of gnats
One can’t help but inhale, 
And army ants erupting 
Like lava from their hills;

Of humming, barbed-wire hedges
Electrified by bees, 
And grasshopper grenades 
Exploding at your feet; 

And after dark the sirens
Trembling through the night 
Of crickets crouched in crumbling 
Shelters out of sight. 

Chandelier

An errant piece of chandelier 
I almost missed it was so clear
Lay in the road this morning,
Like a giant crystal tear 
A cloud had brushed away the night before.

 
I picked it up and held it to the light 
To see if I could strike 
A rainbow, but all I 
Saw was a shard of sky
Multiplied a dozen times
Hanging in the sun on the other side.