Spring Nocturne April 2022 It’s still sleeping-off the hoarfrost, heat drying wet night air, brute & fowl tucked into dwarf cottonwood, cholla, cacti, modest flawed vegetation, reptile, rodent deep beneath undergrowth, spiderweb thick, sticky-white haloing clean beige earth, simplicity uncomplicated unlike love wet-nursing gussied-up, glam moon spring sky with sentiment & sententiae until we too awaken as fledgling from undreamt desert nest, & hole, know outlier other unvarnished in spent nightlight, clear eyed, tongue-tied, standing & waiting like the blind at the gate, bidden to earth’s bare table, naked & ashamed, like shrill coyote screech, mourning dove drone.
Poissons (Sans Pains), Avec Du Vert, Etc. (upon Picasso’s Night Fishing in Antibes, 1939) After Picasso, there is only God. -Dora Maar, this mistress- Last time there, old men still casting splayed net tho’ of course, Maître long-war-gone to Paris, Code Red, yet all matériel, accoutrement, semi-surreal midsummer-thick-heat, blackout night, requisite few faint stars, rickety boats, dramatic sea, locals bearing lamps, speared fish, no new mistress greening, complicating lamplit effect, nor hand, oil, vision redrawing what light inheres in mortal life, reminding us of radiance ever artful, inheld at nightfall, time after dark time.
Lush Life It is a beauteous evening, calm and free . . . -Wordsworth- 1. Nothing up there but gothic-blank, mild mid-March, moon, cloud, star ghosted by indifferent sky, spring bud on the brushwood, rank-sweet desert air, romantic to-the-nines, to live or die for. On the qt, below, uprush of blood and breath from the body, then nothing, two weeks’ worth Meals-on-Wheels, massages, tethered tight bulging calves in coarse muslin, lab coats, pungent OR antiseptics, ins-and-outs, days-on-ends, scary syringes, laryngoscopes, false alarms’ mobile crash carts, courtesy Social Services, New Gen Med, until the Real McCoy, polished grey limo, masked spectres, scrubs & booties hushing-in -and-out the sheeted gurney, wide swing door’s plush back bed, shadowy passage into in-between dream & dawn time, anonymous grey, becoming all of moonless, cloudless, starless, unmoved heaven and earth. 2. Bit of a yenta, truth be told, old-school memes, f-bomb offloads @Agent-O, diabetes, COPD, Mekong D dope, paraquat, mostly the VA, in not quite Tex-Mex/So-Cal nasals, no whiff of badassery about him, reg Navy, even civied-up, cap in-hand tucked behind, at ease, ‘til Claire slammed shut all complex boxes, dug ‘40s swing, ‘50s Jo Stafford, the most, LA country-rock, early Linda covers, Real easy, he’d almost croon, real easy on the ear, and eye.
Go Fish We sense how Hereafter might be, what to make of the Other Side. Too blond. Not black enough. Either way, it’s hard to imagine what seems to be that may not. And without art or intel or Deep- State background, back-channeling, special-ops, recons in those parts, boots-on-the-ground, leans-in, blogs, vlogs, podcasts and webinars, alternative facts, walkback fake news, inevitable spin, we just have to make-do. Go blond. Go blind. Go fish.
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GTimothy Gordon’s Dream Wind was published 2020 (Spirit-of-the-Ram P), while Everything Speaking Chinese received Riverstone P (AZ) Poetry Prize. Work has appeared in AGNI, American Literary R, Cincinnati PR, Kansas Q, Louisville R, Mississippi R, New York Q, Phoebe, RHINO, Sonora R, Texas Observer, among others. Recognitions include NEA and NEH Fellowships and several Pushcart nominations. Empty Heaven/Empty Earth will be published 2022. GTimothy Gordon divides lives between Eurasia and the deep shadows of the Desert Southwest Organ Mountains.