The Light Might Even Materialize
Hart Crane writes And yet these fine collapses
are not lies. I try to take close-ups of the molt
still clinging to the backs of bison,
frayed toupees, curved Vandyke points.
My shoes are soaked so I go barefoot.
Geese hiss, my movements
not as innocuous as I would like to think.
Like a king’s seals pressing wax, my intentions
ask too much. I might witness sunrise.
The light might even materialize
from inside my skull’s cockpit—
attentive as a pincushion. Dawn’s brides are ants.
I listen to breath burn my throat. The universe
is a pin tip compared to the ones we might whisper.
Hellbenders stick to the crevices of fast eastern streams.
The end of memory is history, a stubbed-out cigarette.
The Earth Is Blue from Space
The human population
kills as many different species as it can.
Some dictators squeak and squeal
while a tailor’s tape measure
blows through the air like a sidewinder.
I descend to an ancient city
seething beneath the sea,
a labyrinth of cut stones. The seas
weren’t created to ease our minds.
Does imagination’s touchy motor
re-populate Atlantis with goat herders
and chimney sweeps? I swim upwards
toward the sun as slowly as I can,
stopping every fifteen feet
to avoid decompression sickness.
Dear interlocutor,
keep me apprised of the final agreement
between the moray eel
and the catapult squid—
the beautiful coral, tomorrow’s terrifying habitat.
Not Too High or Too Low
I carry changes in my front pocket, and I’m ready.
I trace my forehead’s scar. Actually,
my concentration sends out feisty tendrils.
I just need to let them crawl as fast or as slow
as they may decide to go. Negotiations
with a thousand tentacles, yes, I feel the nausea
just as much as you do. The perforations are part
of the “as is” sale’s agreement. It’s not a good idea
to get too high or too low. I’ve always wanted
to grasp a dolphin’s dorsal and ride it out to sea.
Spiritual greed is the number one killer in America.
Maybe I shouldn’t own up to these kinds of feelings.
What about daring acts? Chaffinch sounds like a bird
passing through fire. I’m all for a lot of chances.
My friend Matthew says lighthouses are obsolete,
water no longer keeping to its own backyards.
I’m tied up with thousands of rootlets. Now I’m adrift,
some of the circumstance of my own making. I could
probably swim thirty yards if tsunami thrashed everything.
Camera footage captures just a split tree and a bird’s song,
no extinct species. On grainy film, the Tasmanian tiger
looks more like a wolf, long snout, yawning teeth.
We separate mussels from barnacles, and the sea roars.
We defend boundaries with all sorts of words.
What we defend doesn’t really exist, isn’t sentient.
The water eats a larger part of the shoreline each year,
Flamingos rise, sensing a fish eagle skulking the eyelid of the sky.
-
Richard Lyons' fourth book of poems Un Poco Loco was published by Iris Books. He has published two chapbooks of poems Heart House and Sleep on Needles. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and many other journals. He is a former recipient of a Discovery Award from the 92nd Street YMHA in New York City, and also of a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets.
View all posts
-
Photographs of northern Norway in 1881 by Charles Rabot (1856 -1944) From Public Domain Review
View all posts
