Flight Pattern

child
He has peopled the world
outside his window with decoys
and delegates.
They go where he cannot,
they climb and scrabble and perch
where he can only watch.
The cage, you see, is more than just a symbolic prop.
He stares at you, the viewer, to invite you in,
to petition your want and interest,
and once your attention is caught,
he places it in the cage
with all the other collected lostlooks,
his way of securing your love
and validation without compromising
the distance necessary
to emulate flight.
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Cinema

chappy m'man
Framed,
the naked, unabashed glee
of a littleboy protected
by the fact that she, the blind girl,
cannot pin nor freeze him as a tramp;
ennobled by faith and feeling alone,
he has matched his character
to the white flower sprouting from his hand,
he has, in a lighted instance,
become a million times immortal,
because adore is crushing his heart
to a silent pulpy bask.

 

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A Small Thing

birth_detail
It is a small thing, small matter,
and yet, magnificent, profound, terrifying,
yes, terrifying. She is now responsible
for this thing, this love, her love
has assumed a shape, a form, and it lies there,
sleeping, not too far removed
from dream, silence, and basking.
There will be misunderstandings, there will be
windows that open to grief and warm air,
doors that slam shut and open again.
There will be these things, and more.
But for now, right now, there is something pure
which causes her to reflect upon what she has done,
the promise that has been fulfilled into a totem of flesh,
breath and being, and she understands that she is somehow different,
that her love from here on out will be predicated upon vigil
and fierce, golden worry.
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Ceremony

audrey
The nibbling of the croissant, the bandolier of pearls,
the dark sunglasses matching the dark elegant dress,
the stylishly coiffed hair, all of it, agreed upon,
in advance, the fragile means to meeting herself,
serene, supple, undisturbed,
in a window reserved for ceremony
and necessary illusions.
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Cakewalk

673-57_d1
The day the plastic bride and groom
came to life and climbed down from their
three-tier wedding cake, tracking footprints
of vanilla frost onto the carpet of the living room,
which came with a matching couch and recliner,
floral-print curtains, an eleven-year-old daughter,
and a painting on the wall, they assumed the positions
and did as they had seen other married couples do,
watching TV to procure some recognition
of who they were or could become.
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Volume by White

song of cicada chua ek kay.do
The staggered trajectory
of the cicada’s voiceprints,
a slow clean fade
into reprieve
and lasting fugue.
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TV

pb56
Light, a beacon in a fish-bowl.
It was the only channel Bobby received
at night after his parents went to sleep,
after his vision adjusted to
the warning signals arraigned
in silence.
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The Chairs

nicosia-airport-abandoned-1
Stiff-spined, hammer-headed, squat-bottomed,
rubble-flecked alternates
to the chairs that once stilled motion
and held human life; the people lost,
the flights canceled, the chairs
a stirring musical memory, a ghostly paean
to the dashed dreams of a grave new world,
already in progress.
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Mannequin

Mannequin
After countless years of mind-numbing routine,
strolling up and down the avenue
where she shopped for groceries and clothing
and listlessly scavenged storefront windows
with vicarious pleasure, on October 13th
the housewife experienced a foreign sensation,
astonishment, freighted with terror, when the mannequin
perched in the window of Maisy’s–the bald, armless,
bare-breasted, cross-legged, bullet-waisted mannequin
leaned forward and eyed the housewife with naked hunger,
as if wanting to claim the housewife’s life and body as her own,
particularly covetous of her fleshy arms,
dangled totems of validation
that were always just beyond
the mannequin’s liminal reach.
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Alice Through the Looking Glass

drizzle
Drizzle-matted canvas of glass,
static layers of form assimilating harmony–
Alice, sublimely mute, matches gravity
to prayer in refining the lost art of sadness.
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