Milestones
Beloved wrong turn
with the sun in her eyes,
angel at the wrong place
who crossed without being seen.
In honor of the bone
where the air stood firm,
the distant gunfire
lodged in the walls of the heart,
we place a milestone
where the old dirt road
splits in two.
Where we're taught to swallow swords
in shapes of crosses,
to tread water
until our tracks disappear.
Blesséd be the dark clouds
gathering on the horizon
of our lungs,
to the last ice age
that trundled stone faced giants
beneath the soft till
of our feet.
In remembrance of the nursery rhyme
that vanished
in the middle of the night,
love losing control
due to factors of speed
through the steady flat line
of a red light,
where we came to ask directions
from a body
that takes more than one
to carry it to rest.
Here lies two hands
that never came together
to quench our thirst.
The Crisis
A father tells his son every story must have one.
So he closes his eyes and never stops counting.
To make sure he doesn't sneak a peak,
the boy covers his father's face with a bed sheet.
Again, he is left to contemplate
the body's problem, how the X equals Y
without distance or time.
Meanwhile, his son sings his favorite executioner's song
I bet you can't find me.
It's a game of canaries and coal miners.
One swings a pick into dark stone
making a small spark.
The other digs deeper into the earth
by its light.
Both use their hands to amplify their call.
Both answer in the affirmative
to the ring of silence offered back.
They kiss and make bone hills
out of mountains,
whistle past graveyards,
as if it's a pretty girl
undressing in a window,
just to let them know
who is hiding from whom.
The Fire Eaters
I point out a city in flames,
how her body can survive
only if there is a wall
to stop it.
She points out statues of salt,
how our happiness is complicit
only among a ruined distance.
To predict the path
the fire would take,
we went over the details
of our bodies we dragged
home in the morning.
I conjured the angels
afraid of light,
who wrestled
the anonymous bones
from the clock, renaming them
another silence
in its dark mouth.
She lit a match
to see if their shadows
could still dance
behind them.
We were warned by visitation
not to breathe a word.
But the danger we recognized
behind their closed lips
would have sent us
to a Heaven
that is always fatal.
Bio:
Beloved wrong turn
with the sun in her eyes,
angel at the wrong place
who crossed without being seen.
In honor of the bone
where the air stood firm,
the distant gunfire
lodged in the walls of the heart,
we place a milestone
where the old dirt road
splits in two.
Where we're taught to swallow swords
in shapes of crosses,
to tread water
until our tracks disappear.
Blesséd be the dark clouds
gathering on the horizon
of our lungs,
to the last ice age
that trundled stone faced giants
beneath the soft till
of our feet.
In remembrance of the nursery rhyme
that vanished
in the middle of the night,
love losing control
due to factors of speed
through the steady flat line
of a red light,
where we came to ask directions
from a body
that takes more than one
to carry it to rest.
Here lies two hands
that never came together
to quench our thirst.
The Crisis
A father tells his son every story must have one.
So he closes his eyes and never stops counting.
To make sure he doesn't sneak a peak,
the boy covers his father's face with a bed sheet.
Again, he is left to contemplate
the body's problem, how the X equals Y
without distance or time.
Meanwhile, his son sings his favorite executioner's song
I bet you can't find me.
It's a game of canaries and coal miners.
One swings a pick into dark stone
making a small spark.
The other digs deeper into the earth
by its light.
Both use their hands to amplify their call.
Both answer in the affirmative
to the ring of silence offered back.
They kiss and make bone hills
out of mountains,
whistle past graveyards,
as if it's a pretty girl
undressing in a window,
just to let them know
who is hiding from whom.
The Fire Eaters
I point out a city in flames,
how her body can survive
only if there is a wall
to stop it.
She points out statues of salt,
how our happiness is complicit
only among a ruined distance.
To predict the path
the fire would take,
we went over the details
of our bodies we dragged
home in the morning.
I conjured the angels
afraid of light,
who wrestled
the anonymous bones
from the clock, renaming them
another silence
in its dark mouth.
She lit a match
to see if their shadows
could still dance
behind them.
We were warned by visitation
not to breathe a word.
But the danger we recognized
behind their closed lips
would have sent us
to a Heaven
that is always fatal.
Bio:
Donavon's work was recently short listed
for the erbacce-prize from erbacce-press. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming,
in: Moria, Identity Theory, ditch, FRiGG,
Thirteen Myna Birds, Spork, Softblow, Juked, Pedestal, MiPOesias, Anti-, Stirring, and many others.
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