III: Roundels of Remembrance#
I - Photographs
This photograph of strangers’ joy,
In garbage can, though torn in half,
Its glossy eyes through time enjoy
this photograph.
Imagine tears that joyous laugh,
The Autumn gowns and corduroy,
A wedding banquet monograph.
With age then mixed precise alloy
From parts romance and epitaph,
Til future hands at last destroy
This photograph.
II - Walls
Graffitied walls of yearly bloom,
With vagrant spray of aerosols
The vapors fume, condense to groom
graffitied walls.
The artists follow protocols:
the lover’s name, the prophet’s doom,
the epigraphs of homeless sprawls.
The rarer buds of sweet perfume
Are hidden deep in alley malls
Where flowered faces sprung consume
graffitied walls.
III - Laces
The laces sewn across the back
Will lacerate through depths to bone.
The body scars along the track
The laces sewn.
Despite the ache, the blanket grown
From knit of severed fiber slack
Is warm enough to wrap alone.
Yet laces loop, return to tack,
As generations forced atone
And learn by hand which loom to rack
the laces sewn.
IV - Air
The fragrant air which wavers here
in heat like harps of golden hair
that sweep their shoulder length to clear
the fragrant air.
The lily sermons whisper where
I heard your blood through skin by ear,
A moment made in silent stare.
The scent remains, you disappear,
as wind now speaks your name in prayer,
in razor gusts that whip and shear
the fragrant air.
V - Ink
In fading ink, her fine details
like curly cues and shades of pink,
the shadowed lines that leak through trails
in fading ink.
A paper mind she wrote to think,
so words replace what breath inhales
and find my thoughts with hers in sync.
In letters light as chapel veils,
I watch our dance as bodies sink,
a final gasp of life exhales
in fading ink.
VI - Seats
The vinyl seats of classic cars,
the plastic smell their thread secretes,
this cherry burn on cover mars
the vinyl seats.
When Father stooped to sew the sheets,
his needles stacked in columned jars,
his fingers folded rows of pleats.
My fingers trace the wells of scars
as driving down the city streets
the last remain in leaving chars
the vinyl seats.
June 2025
Date |
Publication |
Status |
|---|---|---|
June 13, 2025 |
New Verse Review |
Rejected |
June 22, 2025 |
Backbone Mountain Review (II, IV, VI) |
Pending |