Two Poems

by | Mar 30, 2018

 
 
Novelist
 
A room of solitude, the world.
Out the window huffs of wind
do what they can to enunciate. You listen
like a monk. A votive hula flame.
Sound of a hand reaching in — rabbit
or hyena pulled out. No one knows.
The more you remember —
someone else. Dead midge on the keyboard,
brush it off; curtain whisperer. What it’s started
to mean is no longer you. (This is
happiness.) Your past takes a flourishing bow.
A crowd tosses their hats up inside your protagonist.  

 
 
My Character Says
 
I’m trying to read the book I’m in, eyes tracking the horizon
for danger. My God, I exist.

Not bad: floor-to-ceiling windows,
little lights of the city all the way to the river,

then I’m out on the river on a raft of light, moving fast,
tongue of the creator pleasuring

the craft — splendor of a luminous sail luffing softly —
have a mind to? — want to know

what it’s about. On the table,
velvet-pink & purple snapdragons,

succulent viridian stems in a glass
water-globe, wavering nerves of light,

a sill-dove, plaintive. I reject the petty
love given me to give.
 
 

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