Muted
By Nathan Tompkins
No aerial chants
through the window
honour another morning,
just the canine chorus
clog dancing,
outside the bedroom…again.
Lips, yeah,
I read them
but that damned book
is heavier than a feather,
the tonnage wears
down the
bloodstream.
Living
in a muted world
where
captioning
flares on a tv screen,
it’s a comfort
like
watching
winter fire
drink oxygen.
Moulded
amplifiers
wired
down ear canals
paint shadow pictures
of sound
on the white walls:
an avian moshpit
shaking
the lines,
the whispers
in the children’s kisses.
the strangled echoes
of life
crunching
beneath
tire treads.
They’ll Come Again
By Nathan Tompkins
Take the space between the molecules. ball the fucker up, shove it into the heart.
Life’s water in one hand, joint in the other.
Christy and Shane dance on the iPod.
Drown in a writer’s tears.
Fly with the ravens.
Dream of swans.
Or 60 watt bulbs in glass eyes.
Lips on the moon, ricochet between planets.
Grunt…moan…cry…moan…cry…grunt…
Newborn Changeling, ass still dripping with fog.
Eyes always searching the lake for a swan.
Ears gaze west for Danu’s children singing in the shadows of the bonfire.
Feet always digging the trail north for home.
Home is a shadow of youth, an otherland sanded to the bone by the winters.
Home is a cemetery for stories buried alive, facing the path of the sun.
Puncture the gut with a marlin spike, stick a funnel in the hole, pour the fat inside.
Beneath a cairn of blankets a clock lies on the floor, it’s face kicked in.
Time doesn’t live in darkness though the leaves may fade to white.
It takes a harper’s note to crack the door.[Text Wrapping Break]Flakes of light scutter through the storm, guide the currach to the dawn.[Text Wrapping Break]Fry a salmon in the rain, taste the knowledge carved into its meat[Text Wrapping Break][Text Wrapping Break]
Kiss the ravens goodbye, they’ll come again.
Shove the heart in a wicker cage, set the bloody thing on fire.
Don’t fucking dream of swans.
Nathan Tompkins is a writer based in Portland, though North Idaho will always be home. His work has appeared in many publications including Quail Bell Magazine, Into The Void, and Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place. His latest chapbook, Howl Drunkenly at the Moon, was published in 2018 by Alien Buddha Press, but all remaining copies were needed to solve the Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2020.