Stephen Kirbach – 3 Poems


Stephen Kirbach

3 Poems

junction


surge echo or maybe
the wind westing moist
my Illinois and testing

the corn
town now other
wise unnamed where today

I wobble in
white shoes unyielding where
I already idle a toddler thus

milled under bike
while trundling along
side my mother

a warm breeze
between
her left hip and my

right trimming
the distance
spotting

the playground and trodden
a path between sodden
trash puddles and patchy

snow filth
a rhapsody verging in rapt
witness and awe at kid

trio oncoming on
bikes an uncommon human
myself soon into bitumen

once rendered thorough
fare and ire inasmuch
felt under the sprocket of

one whom
today I beatify psychic
unceasing

reckless
euphoric
remote


up from the muck

riffle mat and layered
             leaf pack
distrustful of the book

that perhaps the skull
continues to shrink or
as such toward a vanishing

point sudden
a series of tracks

left Idaltu

these collections
these hands after dabbling

—ded

             —ded
             locust
             drizzle
             runner
             frisbee
             wheel
             valve

                          —ound
                          snatch
torque hammer
feather             catching

he fell into the cactus
running without watching
             arm outstretched

do you remember

Peter
get out that guidebook

auto
unfurl thy flag
for whatever snatch flapping

the dead runner will wheeze
glancing back over his bone
shoulder eye sockets

             unlocked

bone race agent

hips coming unglued one
woke up one morning and wasn’t

willing nor able
             to here

varnish the roadside and worse
             mind ever and always

wordless


Throttle

The deep and
additional why be
yon our own sun’s
bubble garbles an
aria.  Locomotive
drum underlines two
part harmony whose,
it also a kind
of train song, some
sectored engines shrouded
in green, others stamped
horse and initialed with
corn, an icon both inner
and ear.  Acme rank
satellites, by gobble, de
range what remains
of our sky.  For what were
they asking the hour?  Nadia
throttles them flap
jacks with some
thing resembling a
throat.  Young minutes
regress, head bending
stolen concrete.  Imprison
blind ache melon thump
tempo, for poppycock
coppers I’d seek
even a skunk, sings
the outspoken
spelunker, digging
around in his pockets
for goggles.

             after Lisa Jarnot’s “Train Song”

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