I hear the click-clack worry of the Tic-Tacs shackled in their plastic container… an orange flurry of candy hurries into her hand. We’re parked, engine idle. It’s 1996 and we’re stationed at an ATM. My mother, waiting for an automated response, reaches back into the vehicle to the center console for a pack of safety-orange […]
the song, a garbled bag of birds the trees outside my window are golden today, i will drive the electrolux all over this place; taking up the extradited crumbs of children left in their hunger and haste in this emptiness i imagine what could be present what could be devised what could be devastated out […]
Time smoothes rainbow hardness Of tree basalt, vermillion jasper, Silvery granite and pale feldspar With the help of humdrum But patient jeweller of tides; Volcano-born, earthquake-quarried, Heat-cracked, wind-carved, Death shapes compact among the rocks; It drifts light as a fractured bone When the tide uncovers, It blinks among the smashed shells, Upset by gulls, bleached by salt and […]
John Casquarelli is the author of two full-length collections: On Equilibrium of Song (Overpass Books, 2011) and Lavender (Authorspress, 2014). He is the Chairperson of the Santa Fe chapter (The Santa Fe Poetry Trails) of the New Mexico State Poetry Society (NMSPS). He received his MFA in Creative Writing at Long Island University—Brooklyn. John was […]
The kids across the street had daily tasks, Leon’s to sweep the inside stairs, which often he forgot, and we’d sit on our porch, waiting for his mom, waiting for the air to fill with thuds and wails, and in the calm thereafter we’d speculate on marriage, the oddness of pairings – that sturdy fishwife’s […]
When I told Dun Dunt that I had fallen in love, he served me cold tapioca. With magic powers. I became a large house. A new family moved into me, opening my doors and windows. Two kids clattered up my stairs. The parents bickered about where to put the venus flytrap. I made a frumpy […]
If I try to get everything back, sometimes pure essence of a single flower is all that comes when I call. And sometimes, all I smell is the nothing of fire because flames only smell like whatever they’re consuming. But I keep hearing the slam of the oven door, the scuff of pointed shoes on […]
Ten, no, at least a dozen bagpipes groan across the gravel lot outside your window. Snare drums stutter as you grab the bottle and throw open the sash. The weekly crowd – which includes a woman whose right hand holds a vinyl shoe by Velcro straps, whose left guides at the elbow a man wearing […]
Recess A cartwheeling script of broken music notes tumbles from the tip of my pen: a row of children swinging their legs, propelling their bodies across monkey bars that flex between margins. Recess is cut short by rain. I blow my whistle & crumple the playground into a ball in my fist. I toss what’s […]
Under the tree-filtered sun, it’s Golden Hour and we sit sipping peaches. Gilded haze and sideways light make the finest bouillon. In this cathedral of days, we spin gossamer threads, weave the gold into our tresses. There’s a reason the eve’s last breaths are bullion – to squeeze the bellows of day, an accordion wheezing til […]
© 2018 · Marathon