Spotlight: Giants of Sand by Dana St. Mary

 

cold dark deep

 

the gravel pit pond

is the deepest thing

you can imagine

 

a shopping cart sits

on the bottom in the grass

with a bass

in its ribs

 

waiting

 

the hole in the bottom

where the cold water pours in

who knows what lay

in the darkness

in the fissure

through the crust

 

in the gloom lay

things little minds know well

things only seen at night

things

only hinted at

or implied

or whispered in a story

 

nobody wants to hear

ever.

 

 

 

 

universe

 

the universe was twelve bricks wide

and each brick was a lifetime’s walk

and each brick held a parent’s heart

each brick mapped out the airless night

 

rain would curtain every doorway

every doorway sloped down dry

dry was just a winter’s blanket

doorways mapped the city sky

 

my universe was twelve bricks deep

as even drunkards need to sleep

as every junkie ties a sock

as doorways fill up empty blocks

 

the rain would sheet away the glow

as every street lamp guessed your name

as london fogs push by on legs

as nighttimes all were not the same

 

the universe was twelve bricks wide

twelve bricks kept me slightly dry

 

twelve bricks wide and fifteen deep

all you need to fall asleep.

 

 

 

men are worms and I am a cockroach 

 

i just spent two days on my back

with a 101.5 degree temperature

my wife was very understanding

on the outside

 

for appearances

 

inside

her eyes

her mind

inside her head

i know what she thinks

 

she can change a diarrhea diaper

and talk to AT&T

and wrangle a puking cat

all at the same time

with dinner cooking

and the whites needing folded

when she has the plague

and is bleeding out of her eyes

blinded

 

and not complaining

not whining

 

who’ll listen?

 

and i want to euthanize the cat she’s had

for seventeen years

because she’s too old to shit in the box

and pees on the floor

where i preemptively place pads

to save the oak

 

and then the other dummy

comes along to paw litter

out the damn door

all over the mess

the old one made on the floor

 

and i just bitch and point out the obvious

that men are worms

 

and i am a cockroach.

 

 

 

 

moon sonnet in burnt sienna

 

if i could write a sonnet for the moon

to woo her steady face during the night,

i’d leave her breathless, pooling in my room,

and let her shiver in her frozen light.

 

if i could do one small immortal thing

like marking down the distance of the arc

the moon makes when reflected in the spring

of what pours from me quiet, in the dark,

 

i’d need a better pen and finer page

than what i hold inside my reaching hand,

and it would take an aeon and an age,

till every hourglass ran out of sand.

 

so never send your sonnets to the sky,

for poetry can sing, but cannot fly.

 

 

 

 

they told me to get a coat, it’s fall outside

 

they told me to get a coat

it’s fall outside

 

like when your breath

hangs in front of you

windlessly

 

but i just go in sweaters

and look forward to maybe

a sunny afternoon

 

where clouds chase leaves chase

sparrows chase light chases

chase chase chase

 

and

mostly brown now

the trees begin their clicking season

nakedly waiting

envying pines

statuary

 

my footsteps still feel like summer

my belly murmurs, “spring”

and all my responsibilities mutter,

 

“winter is come”

 

 

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