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Poems
A collection of poems by Chris Galford.
Fae Reflections
By Joseph Barrientos
Two on two
the lapping of the waves
I can hear them calling
like her fingers on my skin;
both call to salt and sky
reflections of two lives
Fae tunes
danced upon the divide
of world’s chanced and chosen
with the water’s swift
abandon
Mementos of Distance
A new month, new energy, and plenty of new creations under my belt…
Come on, 2015, there’s still a little time left. Let’s finish it with a bang!
(And some poetry, of course…)
Outside, the snow is falling
silence stretches in the weight behind
the distance flakes have traveled
what they have seen
what they have known
lonely mementos of their fading.
Last House on the Block
(It’s poetry, so nothing’s right out in the open, but I’m just going to go ahead and say TRIGGER WARNING in all caps before we delve into this one)
crickets quieting footsteps
no one thinks to question the shadows
closed doors leave behind
until the lights paint
red white and blue
across the glass:
through the cracks
the social worker
notices the spider
completing its wrap
where the buds
silently fell.
Mistaken Identity
Schizophrenia
untreated stares
coalesce in cattails
men raked over Spanish moss
hoping for salvation
finding only thistles in the flesh
occasionally mistaken for
identity
We Came from the Sea
Image by Christopher Campbell.
winnowing treasures from the sea
her hands are coarse sand and
swirling shells crying
for the wind
as she turns the sun another degree:
“Look,” she says, “Look,”
without protest from the recess
of notes worn in threadbare hair
–remnants of hippie days, one supposes—
things my fingers can twist
merely into deeper shadow
like bare feet under summer maples.
–
Gradually, the tide takes us
our footprints carried into the waves
that we might walk on water
drowning only flesh
in the reflections
Mirage
Happy National Poetry Day everyone!
Photography Luca Zanon
Mirage
When answers shift like grains of sand
twists to tongue like traders in a foreign land
Truth becomes a camel
sucking sustenance deep into enamel
sifting for parsing hopes
built on childish slopes;
it will last
until the next repast
humanity colored with invisible ink—mirage
success would never dare presage.
Curling at the Edges
(A blast from the past. Now with full audio.)
Roiling at the seams
in browned spots
the print, smeared
still holds flecks of the image
the profile was meant to be.
Lower, still
the ageless quality of a tree
rising from the hunched cranial
(let us admit: too large) cavity
rooted in the faded flesh
our fingerprints
so gently blurred;
without a stream to drink from
it curled and devoured
the paper that gave it breath.
Perhaps, even, its branches
would die to give us this moment.
I have heard it called quaint,
our gentle hording
of a memory,
but the thoughts that resurrected
the flesh beyond those roots
was once quite dear
though without the stream
it rippled free into distortion
like the beating of a dream
of a drum, of a thought;
the water carried me away
one day
rootless under the surface
with nothing but the edges
of a curling notion.
She, Volcano
When she emerged in me I recognized
a Volcano:
in her the world changes
there are no maps,
no Truth
save the landscape she breathes
into Myth
she is the madness that creates
Fantasy in the compulsion
shadows left behind.
The magnitude of an apology
The magnitude of an apology
is an elusive jelly-fish, floating
memories in an expanse
of ever-moving sea-water
crystalline nothing harbored
–in an expansion of space
—-too great to have meaning
——without catching the tide
honesty writhes in and out
but until one tastes its sting
the pieces of possibility
scatter on our shores.
The Waking Den 