Richard Magahiz

Cinq poèmes

 

​

Vacation postcards

​

Mary Celeste

came for tea

left before supper

 

    meteorites adorned each finger

 

stained

with green ink a solitary

Tlönista

 

    through his pockets N-rays pour like milk

 

three and twenty

kidneys and then she can

retire

 

    from your new throat nightingale crypto

 

​

The Mechanics of Silica Under Tension

 

it is no crime

that face lights up

far-off mountains

 

    a Snake King's consort fanged of corset

 

lies, lies

but this was our chaplet

it was deep Spring

 

    the F-stop girl laughing meteors

 

a pocketful of

catalyst itself

drinks light

 

    a kaleidaphobe shuts such stunning eyes

 

RNA stockings

gateways to silver

Baghdad

 

    at the throat a fraud each wrist a bribe

 

​

Is Not-Is

 

"Screw the Neptune moths, says I, and furthermore"

  a sound of breaking bridges came from their half-lighted forms

the long man lays a Canadian cuff on me there in the station 

  and asks if I crave a pardon, two for the price of three, 

like the black heart his mama said he was, 

  him drinking mother's milk straight from the casaba vine 

just living together in the cleft of the melon 

  the sainted and the damned rolling around, in grace, 

fire the opening bid for cold dark immortality

  for lust-strife that all the candy stripes remember, 

an onion in the cup be absorbing the night cramps 

  leaves them stretched out on the bedposts- 

veiled teeth as all we are all stuck on this vessel 

  and when we get to Salem the dreaming pulls us back, 

loves us with sour eyes. 

                                      I'm so very done, done with Neptune

 

​
 

Cataphract

 

Every scale bears a name, a name of a fallen comrade,

the one lapping over the next, bright tiles on a pitched room,

sling stones and broad arrows, the slender javelin

too weak to pass through, broken and blunted.

It sheds them like water, like the arterial flow,

shining like cook fires at dawn, the flame come down from heaven.

Only the strongest mount bears it, this heaving mountain of metal.

 

​

The doornail

 

The doornail woke come Monday

Went looking for honest folk

The scuppers were dry from drought

And the Moon sent him back home

 

On Tuesday the doornail heard rain

But not for him, not at all

The songbirds sat upon their nests

As the dizzy world dissolved

 

By midweek the doornail raged

The Sun swore to wear a mask

The trees were gloved and drooped

None of the stars wore plasters

 

Thursday the doornail scryed left hands

To see who's paid their tax

Decreed the rest to bedlam

Where deathwatch beetles scratch

 

Friday's doornail slept through torrents

The housewife shirked her chores

Oh how her linen skin would pull

To waxy folds at night

 

The doornail read all Saturday

The wisdom of the Romans

By rushlights at the stream

While slaves were washing linen

 

Of Sunday the doornail grieved 

His work was far from done

The house was stoppered up

Completely like a tomb

 

​

Richard Magahiz tries to live an ordered life in harmony with all things natural and created but one that follows unexpected paths. He wrangles computers as a day job but imagines a time when life might center around other things. His work has appeared in DM, Eccentric Times 3, Star*Line, Dreams and Nightmares, Under the Basho, Eye to the Telescope, Call Me [When It's Over], Uppagus, Sein und Werden, and Mobius: the Journal of Social Change. His website is at https://zeroatthebone.us/

​

​