Echo Charm
Right on left, or returned
what circles back, unbroken
yet opened?
Your mouth centers me.
Diminished, I rise, listening.
Grass rubbing against grass.
The lizard’s scarlet throat, swelling.
Not refusal, but denial.
Eyes the color of blood.
You practice your words carefully,
repeating each special phrase.
Blood the color of sky.
Sky the color of eyes.
And always the warm shade.
Links to my publications for January – February 2017:
The Slag Review
“Scarecrow Pretends”
Sourland Mountain Review
“I Praise the Moon Even When She Laughs”
Silver Birch Press “Me at 17” Prose and Poetry Series
“Letter from Kansas”
Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine
“Runaway Bus”
Glass: A Journal of Poetry
“What We Say When We Say Nothing”
Calamus
“Palinode (sol, ischemia, night)”
Steel Toe Review
“How to Do Nothing”
“And All Around, the Withered”
B. McClellan’s Weblog (International Poetry Month)
“From Left to Right I Ponder Politics and Kanji”
“A Brief History of Babel”
Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art
“Henry Lee Remembers Grandmother’s Garden”
“What are You Going to Do (Cento)”
“Magic”
“The Draft”
“Diverting Silence”
Matt Larrimore, editor of Four Ties Lit Review, interviewed me in September 2014:
http://fourtieslitreview.com/home/interviews/interview-with-robert-okaji/
Listening to Cicadas, I See Charlottesville (Ghazal)
Shedding one coat, you live in the red, apart
from the rest. Never together, forever apart.
In this sun-drenched field, the cracks drill deeper,
wider, dribbling soil and small lives, expanding, apart.
What falls truer than any words released from this man?
Once divided, never again to touch, always apart.
The electric shrill fluctuates pitch, in unison. Hundreds
of tymbals, shredding dusk, now together, then apart.
You narrow your eye to a slit, but still see the entire
spectrum. Wing clicks, stridulation. Whole yet apart.
Shearing syllables, I learn the language of half-truth.
What is my name? I reach for that fragment. It falls apart.
I thought it might be worthwhile to assemble these in one place, to make it easier for anyone interested in reading my recent publications.
MockingHeart Review
“This Island is a Stone”
Vox Populi
“Scarecrow Calls Out the Man”
The Icarus Anthology
“Shadow Charm”
“Forgetting Charm”
Blue Fifth Review
“Heroes”
The Mantle
“Overlooked”
The Lake
“Letter to Wright from Between Gusts”
Eclectica
“A Word Bathing in Moonlight”
“Scarecrow Dreams”
“Missing Loved Ones”
Birch Gang Review
“Landscape with Jar”
Blue Bonnet Review
“Buddha’s Not Talking”
Picaroon Poetry
“Memorial Day, 2015”
Bright Sleep
“The Sky Withholds”
Crannóg
“Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome”
Outcast Poetry
“The Theory and Practice of Rebellion”
Today, of all days, I just had to reblog Stephanie L. Harper’s poem!
“Solar Eclipse with Sunspots” by Matthew Harper
First,
get knocked up,
plan a wedding in three months
and waddle down the aisle in white pumps
that fit you when you bought them.
Gain a total of forty-eight pounds
while throwing up for forty weeks,
and give birth to a nine-pound baby boy,
who is bigger and cries louder than any other
newborn in the maternity ward.
After you blink once or twice,
find yourself moving across the country
for your husband’s engineering job,
with three cats, the six-week old baby,
and all of their respective paraphernalia
crammed into a purple minivan.
Critical Step: Raising Your Boy
To do this, start learning more about more things than you knew existed;
begin appreciating that this cherubic, gorgeous,
but almost alien issue of your loins
sees individual ice crystals in distant clouds,
hears crickets chirping at dusk
over the sound of rush-hour traffic,
View original post 538 more words
My poem “Heroes” is live at Blue Fifth Review. Many thanks to editor Sam Rasnake for accepting this piece.
Links to my publications for January – February 2017:
The Slag Review
“Scarecrow Pretends”
Sourland Mountain Review
“I Praise the Moon Even When She Laughs”
Silver Birch Press “Me at 17” Prose and Poetry Series
“Letter from Kansas”
Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine
“Runaway Bus”
Glass: A Journal of Poetry
“What We Say When We Say Nothing”
Calamus
“Palinode (sol, ischemia, night)”
Steel Toe Review
“How to Do Nothing”
“And All Around, the Withered”
B. McClellan’s Weblog (International Poetry Month)
“From Left to Right I Ponder Politics and Kanji”
“A Brief History of Babel”
Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art
“Henry Lee Remembers Grandmother’s Garden”
“What are You Going to Do (Cento)”
“Magic”
“The Draft”
“Diverting Silence”
O at the Edges 