Transcendental Beaks, by D. R. James

Bird on a Branch, by Pablo Picasso (Spain) 1928

Transcendental Beaks
 
On a strained jog around the corner when the flesh is crunched, my pocket spasms, foams. It is the constant coffin-needling. I am one of the coffin’s nails. Instantly the pitched gush runs smack in the center of my vision, trampling all in. I feel abandoned and sighing tattoos ribboning around me, worms in ephemeral glue that cascade when their trickles are rushed by the burn. I sense I should melt to escape down through all sorrow and then deeper until I am drawn to fan out and split low into a hollow, roll over the mildew of a meadow. It seems strained, difficult to squeeze. Out there in the weeds shriek beaks, yet none of those beaks is telling. They could tell everything. They could coil the cushioned smoke. They play the hinge for the whole mission. Everything contorts to them. Draws on them. Seeds them….

D. R. James

D. R. James’s latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020); his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at Origami Poems Project; and individual poems have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and journals. He lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan.  https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage