Dan Raphael
going to the station--be it police, radio or transit,
between situations, illegible contexts, my waving hand
brushed something other than air, i feel the pollen
before i answer by sneezing, thirsty globules,
goblets too heavy to lift and leaking
what would you do--a doorway no higher than shoulders and no joints to bend
would be an arrow, a trackless trolley, wheels instead of hands to ride cables
or feetside up among furrows and the last evidence of three buildings ago
so few empty lots, kept fallow by competition
suddenly there’s one less or one more, a mirrored pair, a trio in two bodies
a house that looks like a train, a train that looks like a drive-through,
one-way carwash of hungry scrubbers, soap with ulterior motives,
a clean few would agree on, some might call censorship, edited for our safety
a piece of the sky is missing, black lightning streaks on pale blue air,
hungry desiccant thunder from beneath the urban horizon
some of the river would like to decohere and rain up,
not enough fish for a quorum, the earthworms too deep
to sense what’s at their door, an urge to trade, to get inside
by being eaten and scatter into a micro-army of chemicals
meant for other times and species
whether visual or audio recordings, words whose referents
left the planet sideways centuries ago, as if one more tomorrow
will keep its promise with the radio alarm indecisive as a slot machine
i don’t want to receive the rewards of craftily recombining like haggis
in a genetically modified stomach, digestion in another direction
not needing a reinfusion of bioflora for another 100 meals
where the flesh of my world is tattooed by all manner of lights—
incomplete, overfull, premature, unshielded, trans-spectral,
bones ready to unscroll, calcium dreaming of underwater,
seas before there was rain, thirst before throats
where did the vacuum at my center find so much to erupt with,
as nature abhors introduced contexts/constructs, an intention deficit,
extension surplus, so many more ephemeral notes than voices
but if the symphony is in tatters, if the puzzle
doesn’t have enough spaces for the answers
a tunnel where the heart should be, lungs in the sky instead of clouds,
drops of distilled information falling from skyborn interstices
absorbed by buildings and machines while bouncing off soil and skin
dan raphael's poetry collection In the Wordshed was published by Last Word Press in 12/22, More recent work appears in Egophobia, e-ratio, Fresh Words, A Too Powerful Word and Otoliths. Most Wednesdays dan writes and records a current events poem for The KBOO Evening News.