where is the river :: a poetry experiment

Jade Wallace :: Four poems Kevin John O'Neill :: Two poems Sheila E. Murphy :: Four poems Nathan Anderson :: Three poems David Capps :: Five poems

  Vanishing Beach   At night, the water level rises and the beach vanishes into the tide. I stand on the overhanging cliff and look for shadows of the lost city under the waves.   In the morning, the water recedes and I am given back all I ever missed.   For a while, I wished I could live in a small shed on that ledge overlooking the shore. But I want these rituals of returning, fleeing and finding my way back, to the waves and the tide and the stones through the mist gathering over and around us.   I like the way that desire takes the place of disappearance.     Nature Has Limited Patience for the Human Condition   I think that growing old here —in the smiling silence between the ocean and the marshes, among more crows than neighbours, with no way out except by fallible car— would only lead to swelling grief.   It is a treacherous crawl across the cliff face to reach the rock I perch on to see the beach. Twilight is growing...

  Absolution He starts every email, every conversation, every speech with an apology. It is as though he's granting absolution to himself for having stated it. For he is not requesting understanding. He is stating that he has made you second class and may mildly regret what he has done but feel no remorse. He may know how little room he had to change what is around him. He may also be aware of his disinclination to fight for something outside of himself. His voice sounds inconsequential and depleted of authority.      Walk the Sweet Walk   Walk the sweet walk  after conversation dry the hands as midnight cools the premises we lark the brook light   and the summer senators go lithe to reason pictures losing frames we lie awake recalling how a puzzle piece once missed   adjusts the landscape to mean nothing flows again and all the water heard required a little wind   a breath at least to move attentio...

  Lady Precious Nine Divided   some possibilities of pottery spiritual black sheep tomb guardian dealers scorn foreign styles vertical bands clippings open contours now change your name as the heat intensifies common themes nature loving a desert is like loving you who opens the earth at red claw globe star drawn over fiery mountain valleys deep as the flood around me i want to bust out of the cosmos fertility delay my want living with you is like living alone sacrifice fought against teacher’s unions with car loans war fears are flickers of shootout ecstasies       Love Letter from the Future   she represents a southern continent simultaneous shaman warrior positioned as if to leap with horn slung i’m not concerned with the momentary nor with the reappearance of the sun instantaneous ar-14 right many things at once muse and spectator babble mouth dead words past their prime drive screws with hammers there’s not profit in conflict fell for t...

  Pythos (Un)burial   Under the frigid stars of initiation a blacksmith pulls back his hair, not knowing what comes next, whether after a world of forgiveness will rise in the steam from the quench as a stream of ancient vowels encloses him.     The pythos slides from its burial cloth, root and soil beneath the canopy olive-blue. Branches part their leaves to receive it, shining in near-darkness as palms level with the dirt supplicate their touch.         Trireme   Having neared the beginning of their dreams, pines creak like the bones of old men, warring ships and lost memories at the outset of death. From where I labor, the harbor   seems far, Trireme planks fit stubbornly into place: pitch,   tar, lime, hair, flax glistening in the sun, glistening together upon the black coat, to hold back the bilgewater of my life.   Athens, which is stone, which is vacant, Athens will remain as any world would. Caress...

  Tantric Economy   Pleiades laughs gesturing out the highway kind sea spoken and reliquary as afterimage I was told you did not hold the hand I was told you would not burn the cusp I was told you do not eat the buzzard I was told you cannot lisp the scent I was told you will not dance the shake I was told you did not place ambrosia I was told you cannot seem amusing I was told you do not turn to slipping I was told you would not please the triumph I was told you cannot ask for singing I was told you did not thirst penumbra I was told you would not track resplendence I was I was Burn and not Burn   Stone Fruit   Rolling in the caliphate pre-emptive purgatorial lost linen as the weathered bread Now standing as the abolitionist remarkably gone vampiric and miasmic Totemic through tragicomedy believer and believed thrown once as stones to meet the eye [try solution 1 over 3]   Song Within   Pleaser ...