By: Craig Kirchner

Pointe

Standing in attitude mode
on the head of a pin,
time speeds up as it stills,
seconds pass like decades,
handshakes become relationships,
a blade of grass, a lawn,
the lawn framing the reflecting pool,
at the Taj Mahal.

Balanced between breaths,
a wink is antiquity revealed,
a taste, its history, its future,
oysters sliding down the tongue,
sex at the beach,
kissing salt clavicles after a swim.
Pirouettes twirl lifetimes of tears,
storms of warmth and grace.

Flexed and grand-pliéd,
grounded to center,
to now, the present, the instant,
the arrow that splits the arrow,
the moment of epiphany,
at Cana in public,
water not turned to wine,
the water was the wine.

homecoming, and white bucks

Yesterday’s purple pencils
oozing through the cracks
of the hardened sap of solitude,
the runted odor of today’s, deformed.

The musty, musky, brick-brown
doily of patiently aged, paperboy’s belt.
The gurgling, bubbling coffee perk,
ah, and then the brown drip.

The graceful lint of lace hanging from
the ceiling, in the hammock of wit
which laughs to mock and defy
the absurdity of gravity.

The grass-stained white bucks
that walked in by themselves,
masquerade as snails, then coasters,
do not utter or turn to face the room.

These are the friends who share
the morning Wheaties, the comrades
sought when the whistle announces,
the end of that eight-hour thing.

Driving home finds ballets on every corner.
Packed into the Packard,
the journey becomes jelled,
to the syntax of strobing time and space.

Slipping the key into the front door moat,
the pencils relax, the edit is complete,
today’s narration leaks like slime,
sleepily into tomorrow.

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Craig Kirchner thinks of poetry as hobo art, loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Decadent Review, New World Writing, Wild Violet, Ink in Thirds, Last Leaves, Literary Heist, Ariel Chart, Lit Shark, Cape Magazine, Flora Fiction, Young Ravens, Chiron Review, Valiant Scribe, Punk Monk and several dozen other journals.