In Our Dark
In our dark a house made of broken piano keys
chimes in the breeze of hot breath.
Rabbit heart skips a beat and thunder claps
behind a cloud that might be purple
and throbbing for a couple of words it can't utter.
And the contours of lumps of beds
in small villages ache happily in my back
like the rift in a comet tail sore in its return
which is always skewed.
As a child I dragged a fine fanged rake
through summer lawn clippings
and made a green maze to future.
I thought "where will it all go?" The "all" to me
was a handful of stars I pulled from books
and the bottoms of my pockets.
I stuck them to this dark.
"Hey, is that your star?" Then even,
I saw your pupil expand
like a drop of mineral oil on a wet body.
Your hair is the tail of something I'd like
to tame and pet, running off into snow in the middle of August.
Don't die wolf-dog with the lake in your eye.
Don't die hummingbird and flutter heart,
tend to your flowers.
Don't die my sleep in two,
my long distance lines that suspend black.
Duck call.
If you could see this page you'd see it's all fucked up.
I fucking love it like I love.
Stay in our dark my sweet sweet sleep lily,
sweet hummingbird heart at the lake.
Take light from the tap and wash it
on a deer's lips because grace was confused tonight.
She knows three steps and walks them
well, then she skips from bird
to bird and dances like the rawhide
nooses that hang hands in the metro
where light is inconsistent and breaks.
And then she twists before sleep folds
in, some flutes that dogs have licked after smelling
through the maze.
Emptiness in a doe's eyes and a glass globe sea shadow.
My lashes lug in their night promenading
Sleep is the water of a good god.
In our dark animals mouth the words we can't
and sleep tucks them into the constellations
that dangle above our heads.
Sleep is the nectar of a good god
in our dark.
Bio Note
Chad Faries has published poems, essays, photographs, interviews, and creative non-fiction in Exquisite Corpse, Mudfish, New American Writing, Barrow Street, The Cream City Review, Afterimage, Post Road, and others. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was a Fulbright Fellow in Budapest. He now has almost four unpublished manuscripts. When not traveling he is a carpenter and professor. He recently purchased an old Victorian home and now is planning his next Triumph motorcycle in order to solidify his artificial existence as a renaissance man.
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