E·ratio

Issue 19

 

 

 

Two Poems

 

Dan Raphael

 

 

 

 

Subterranean

 

 

in the trunk inside the trunk

wearing auto parts, parts of kitchen appliances.

egg beaters 2 inches tall like a steam punk mechanical fly

whales emulating side-wheelers

 

repeat the trees, the grace of will, the coincidence of love

trumping gravity but not other planets, planets disguised as body

   organs—

when my livers in retrograde, when my nostrils & lungs are in

   opposition

 

flip a coin & all the stars are behind us

populating a galaxy w/ gelatinous shadows

plucking sparks like novas of guitar strings;

a wind I cant feel blows the music away

before I can name it, before I have a beat to open 

 

 

 

 

This June could be March

 

 

when i get to the streets more like swimming

fins on the earth, fins in the air slice open the sun

to find several directions, no rules.

the wind cant stay out of my face

as my skin cant decide between fur and feather, hard or soft, dry

   or oily

my inner dermatologist confronts the skys jittery mirror

like a wall of reeds, whistles and bottle tops, each begging to be

   inserted in

momentary lips rubbed raw & musical by all that needs to escape

 

 

so many levers in the asphalt reacting randomly to my steps—

   time-delay,

a flame 3 states north, something I’ve never seen now in my

   pocket—

where the streets only names are a language I’m too light &
   young
to utter,

prostrating through the neighborhood without compass or
   turn signal,

naked as grass, flowing like a hundred syrup fountains,

clouds of liberated skin hazing me with micro-weather—

relative humility,   barometric pleasure,   high pressure life-styles

and midnights so still time could change directions if I twitch,

when my big hand cant find my crotch and my little hands
   unable to
ward off

the starving meteor flies repulsed by their asphalt relatives,

drawn to the vacuum malls of my heart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan Raphael’s most recent books are The State I’m In (nine muses books) and Impulse & Warp: The Selected 20th Century Poems (Wordcraft of Oregon).  Current poems appear in Otoliths, Caliban, Unlikely Stories, Big Bridge and Shadows of the Future. 

 

 


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