LEAVING THE
NIGHT, THIS WINE
Mid-week,
mid-August
sibilance of
distant voices disturbs.
Rainfall
chances heighten in the heat.
The highway
grass holds secrets,
lure of a
healing shrine,
wine-stained
ghost story.
Yellow
penthouses spike
the perimeter
garden parks.
Museum
galleries emptied of
cut, curve,
splice of color
sit secured
behind scavenger chains.
Maine summer
memories wither,
shaping a
child’s decades.
Lodged in stasis, we argued
a Chinatown
courtship of
opium pipe and
ginger prawns,
biography’s
careless sense.
I tossed it to the table:
Practice to
your limitations.
I don’t want
questions.
Give me your
answers to
the test of
days alarms.
Lantern lines twist
in a rising wind.
Ballroom
parties assemble
along the River
Walk.
wends
through all conversation.
I take the
dining change,
stuff it in my pocket,
follow you to
the pier.
Wrung from confusion’s choice,
arrangement ironies,
the alphabet of secrets leaves us
lying in our final letters:
You fell in love.
I moved in another’s direction.
ONE MORE THING TO TRY
Waiting for my day to change,
I’m parked outside a house by
the Union Pacific tracks.
In the car I catch
the singer’s meaning on CD.
I follow lines in the lyric sheet,
tell myself to take the blame
for cruelties charted,
those cloaked windows.
I trust four people and no memories.
I cultivate a cryptic streak of mean,
odd resentments that pressure my temper.
The border a few days drive,
disappearing is possible on
hunting trails, river tracks
to jungle pyramids.
Porch light flicks off,
curtains pulled for the morning.
Rock garden and rose bushes
shine with dew.
Watch loose on my wrist, I empty
my chicory coffee into the street.
Stepping out of the car,
I prepare an answer
I don’t trust myself to give.
NO ONE ANSWERS
THE WARY LOVER
Wrecked upon the
land,
a fallen angel
testifies at the cross,
survivors sneer
at contradictions
in prayer over
supplication.
Storm shadows
roll—
no rain, but a
threat.
There was beauty
yesterday.
Standing in the
doorway a few seconds,
I watched highs
wind dissolve
a cloud across
the chalk-blue sky.
Now a hospital
van creeps the block,
my wife touches
my shoulder,
turns me back to
an argument
of black humour
and terse words.
We are rending a
marriage,
moving from
discord,
from penitential
psalm.
In these hours,
this arena
we battle like
inquisitor and accused
resolved to
recrimination.
In a misty
October freeze,
one of us will
take the Galilee highway,
the other, a goat
to sacrifice
upon a Damascus
peak.
We’ll make our way
to other borders, learn our lives again.
A FEAST, THIS RIGHTEOUS LAND
Stealing wealth
from the Bible,
I sold my song
for Jesus
to a stranger on
the street.
As she signed the
check
I told her they streamed
as
Mother Mary’s
words through me.
Rippled with
Bacon’s rhymes,
rapt metaphor,
ogre’s folk tales,
I spread reverence
pamphlets
throughout the
swamplands.
Sunrise brings a
service ceremony,
Jubilee songs,
the snare of fevered cadence.
Heaven’s
harmonies on radio
circulate the day,
the house.
Sparrows sing
through first light,
fruitful land
glowing with glory.
Times are
prosperous for some.
I’m finding
nickels and pennies in the parks.
I keep them jingling in a jar at home.
MORNING TO WORK
Dawn just past, early sun
blinds the drive, etches
high rise towers from rain shadows.
Walking a mud scrape sidewalk
I wipe bottle’s condensation on my jeans,
curse a neighbour’s incessant dog.
Too early for office drama,
I ignore the cell phone pulse.
Ahead of Thursday’s collection,
dumpster divers sift
for bedroom suites and bassinets.
As the landscape crew unloads,
dew-laden plastic festers in the bushes,
crushed cups skitter with a kick.
A hood-sitting robin sings undisturbed
at the hybrid start of my car.
Selecting a CD, I wait until flight
to push the volume on Communique.
A Pushcart Prize nominee, R.T. Castleberry is an internationally published poet and critic. He was a co-founder of the Flying Dutchman Writers Troupe, co-editor/publisher of the poetry magazine Curbside Review, an assistant editor for Lily Poetry Review and Ardent. His work has appeared in Vita Brevis, Blue Collar Review, Misfit, Trajectory, Pacific Review, White Wall Review, Silk Road and K’in. Internationally, he’s had poetry published in Canada, Great Britain, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Portugal. the Philippines and Antarctica. He lives and writes in Houston, Texas.
Mr. Castleberry’s work has been featured
in the anthologies, Travois-An Anthology of Texas Poetry, TimeSlice, The Weight
of Addition, Blue Milk’s anthology, Dawn, Soul X Southwest, Anthem: A Tribute
to Leonard Cohen, LEVEL LAND: Poems
for and about the I35 Corridor,
Kind Of A Hurricane: Without Words, You Can Hear the Ocean: An Anthology of
Classic and Current Poetry, Chaos A Poetry Vortex and What I Hear When Not
Listening: Best of The Poetry Shack & Fiction, Vol. I.
Mr. Castleberry received a Pushcart Prize
nomination in 2014.
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