What Came Over Me - Jacob Mauser

JACOB MAUSER

What fills the void of night? Nightbird song or cigarette smoke Or secrets. How neat families (father in a suit, Mother a dress) keep Secrets like fine china, Covered only as deep (or nearly) As mulch over dirt in their Gardens. You could almost believe that It’s mulch all the way down. Dig a hole and the Sandy earth rushes to fill The emptiness. Can a void fill itselfHow the sound of a distant train Enters the night long after The train has gone.

poetry

RENE CAMPBELL

Word One: not something Hallmark can sell for $1.99. sanctified only by stares drowning in alcohol, archaic coping mechanisms never seemed so helpful until barstools were taken like the breath wasted yelling at the youth babbling in boozy breaths on elm.

Word Two: taste language on unfamiliar tonguesone day it will ruin everything not yet seen. intelligence is not genetic predetermined patterns; if that were the case green eyes would have rolled ages ago, tears cried months ago would not repeat in waves like a storming tide crying out for truth.

Word Three: it is the way teeth slowly sink into lips with a pause in breath which controls, a dark room lit only underneath a body never reaches for books in bedside drawers. millennial conversation calls it normal- to shake soda cans until the explosion is all that is left. but even then, the tables never turn.

Word Four: beyond burned bridges laughter is heard hazing heavy history. the way paperweights shatter in palms will open doors to flowered dirt roads. in exploration there is risk to be accounted for, but rather than ponder destruction, the only vexation is time wasted stumbling through streets with wrong labels. streetlamps ablaze with ashes must educate foreign footsteps to find each-other

poetry