Three Poems by Richard Magahiz

 

First-hand testimony

That one had the BEST INCARNATED BY field marked
so we heaved it up into the hopper
and sure enough this big boy gets lodged
up around where the trunnions poke out.

Me and the team, we get our rods in there
and it was tough not busting its membrane,
but we cast that load free, tumbling down.
Whoever got that engram has a handful, likely.

And if there's trouble I'd say we saw it coming.
Hadn't been another one like it since,
not exactly, though we've had our struggles.
Mostly loads've been shrinking, seems to me,

peas in a cannon barrel, more like.
Those are my recollections, all I can say,
and I hope it wasn't anything we tried to ward off
that brought calamity or caused much ruin.

Slow down why don't you?

In a half-aware blur
  into someone's world
   caught and then released,
woozy with oxygen,
  with this astonishing sun
    its twin the moon,

my dull head, word-dazzled,
  prompts a friable night of stars.
    I am reminded how things
could so easily, quite softly,
  fluff into nonsense,
    a confusion of feathers.

Wriggling in its orbit
  the globe begins its slip
    and spaces in between.
Serendip opens up,
  something unplanned-for
    squirts up before my eyes.

A fragrant humming machine:
  calling itself language
    self-unfolds in my poor head
I wonder what to say
  to make it make
    some sloppy sense.

Soon nothing has a name,
  is only what it is.
    All at once behind glass,
life ploughs through its lane,
  until an adult voice
    states quite clearly:

"Stop! You've got to go"

--

they left us nothing
just city streets,
hard vacuum

Our lady of a thousand beaches

When she was cross
the tide would drop
by nine inches.
The little boats
stood around like

mummified dogs then,
helpless and naked.
The wind would
freshen upon
her command,

aye, naturally,
this is something
everyone understood.
People all murmur
as if she were

cold and cruel
but I don't think
she is like that.
No, you're just wrong.
There's way too much

ocean, way too
little headland
the way I see it.
And looking up
at her billow

you were liable to
quiver in your boots,
forget your schooling.
I catch myself plumbing
all the silt that

I never sounded
in her dominion,
the stripey cockles,
sea-wrack salads,
and know this:

I forged my own
iodine shackles.

Richard Magahiz tries to live an ordered life in harmony with all things natural and created but one that follows unexpected paths. He's spent much of his time wrangling computers as a day job but is now working on a way to center life around other things. His work has appeared at Star*Line, Dreams and Nightmares, Sein und Werden, Chrome Baby, Bewildering Stories, and Abyss and Apex. His website is at https://zeroatthebone.us/