The Green Light has put up the collected works from their National Poetry Month celebration. .My poem “Houston” appeared on April 4th. Many thanks to editors Caitlin and Ash for taking this piece!
Chilled Soba
I am not
philosophical
today,
but hunger
concerns me.
Oh, not
real hunger
but a desire
to consume.
Afternoon
chews morning.
Evening
swallows afternoon.
Morning digests
night. And I,
slurping chilled
soba with
pickled ginger
and scallion,
wonder which verb
my days will choose.
“Chilled Soba,” first appeared in Kikwetu: A Journal of East African Literature in November 2018. I am grateful to the editors for accepting my poem.
The Shadow Behind You
That moment, spent. And another.
This goes on for hours,
days, metal pails filled with condensate,
emptied onto the parched soil
and sucked away within minutes.
What stares back at that precise second?
A void forms flesh, becomes a vessel
tumbled into the darkest rectangle,
leaving no evidence behind.
Our natures, revealed in absentia.
The dog barks at his reflection,
never thinking to examine himself,
while you stoop under the weight
of the tethered black, adjusting
your conscience, killing time.
* * *
“The Shadow Behind You” first appeared in Issue 125 of Right Hand Pointing. Thank you to editors Dale Wisely, Laura M. Kaminski, F. John Sharp and José Angel Araguz for taking this piece.
O at the Edges 