Three Poems by Craig Kirchner

 

         Apophenia 

 

 

There have been four blacks in a row, 

put it all on red. 

 

He makes them all the hard way, 

a Benjamin on two deuces. 

 

The pecans on the Sandie 

look like Charlie Brown. 

 

That cloud formation is Putin’s face, 

but we know they keep on moving. 

 

Fearing the rustling in the weeds, 

saved many a Neanderthal. 

 

Played backwards, Paul is dead. 

This channel is all fake news. 

 

If it doesn’t confirm innocence, 

keep it to yourself. 

 

When they win,  

they will look for me. 

 

They’ll want to fill those camps, 

with the biggest non-believers. 

 

This may sound disjointed, 

but no, I can’t seek a second opinion, 

 

that’s how all this started, and yes, 

I no longer speak to my family. 

 

 

 

 

             Legal Aide    

 

         

I’m waiting, patiently, vertically, for the ink,  

or often as not the carbon graffiti  

from Mr. Paper Mate, or his nephew Pencil,  

to move horizontally across  

my perfectly parallel blue lines.  

 

My name is Top-Flight,  

not to be confused with the golf ball,  

though they too are vibrant white,  

and can be partnered with in canary.  

 

I’m from Chattanooga  

and until I landed on this desk,  

travelled with my siblings,  

who also were anticipating their graduation,  

to the puberty of accepting the conspicuous,  

grey-bruise ghouls that Pencil  

seems to have, in unlimited supply.  

 

I indent - two skinny, vertical lines,  

waiting to be recognized as  

the starting point,  

for the left to phantom right race of,  

hopefully a sentence.  

 

I am often referred to as Legal,  

though I’m never sure I’m being taken seriously,  

perhaps I’m just being doodled with,  

but tonight, a new liquid permeates my fiber.  

 

Crisp curls blight my white lines, 

administered from a well.  

Quill, he calls himself,  

and he seems like serious business,  

says he wants to forge a relationship,  

that will glide us home to words,  

perhaps fiction, maybe a sonnet.

   

       Questions 

 

 

A quick interrogation on the tube, 

and I’m in an olive drab room, 

with a stark Van Gogh type table, 

separating me from a moustache and goatee, 

in a South American military uniform, 

snapping a horsewhip against his thigh, 

who wants to question the questions. 

 

What, he shouts, is the most 

diverse and controversial, 

it has an all-encompassing grasp. 

What are you here for, and 

what is it that you can do for me? 

 

Where, is usually more specific,  

but can seem infinite in scope as  

an unknown.  

Where exactly are you from? 

 

When, requires an understanding of time, 

he stamps his boot, which we all pretend, 

twirls the point of his beard, 

but very few achieve. 

 

The Commandant,  

now wants to get back to the original quiz.  

“It’s 11 PM, do you know,  

where your children are?” 

 

Their location being the obvious 

open-ended, the where –  

but the underlying, between-the-lines,  

that seem of most import to him – 

what constitutes my children, 

and what difference is it,  

that it happens to be 11 PM? 

 

It’s actually 10 PM,  

Tony snaps me back to  

bingeing the Sopranos, 

and realizing that ‘how’ and ‘why’ 

are probably more involved,  

and will have to wait,  

until the next commercial.

 

Craig Kirchner is retired and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems in a folder on a laptop. These words tend to keep him straight.

After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Poetry Quarterly, Decadent Review, New World Writing, WordSwell, Vine Leaf Press, 7th Circle Pyrite, Ariel Chart, Blotter, Bombfire, Borderless Crossings, Cape Magazine, Carolina Muse, Chiron Review, Coneflower Café, Dark Winter, Edge of Humanity, Fairfield Scribe, Fixator, Flora Fiction, Floyd County, Gas, Ginosko, Globe Review, Hamilton Stone Review, Impspired, Ink in Thirds, Journal of Expressive Writing, Kleksograph, Last Leaves, Last Stanza, Light Ekphrastic, Lit Shark, Literary Heist, Literary Yard, Loud Coffee, Medusa’s Kitchen, Moria, Muse India, Neologism, Poetry Super Highway, Punk Monk, Quail Bell, Same Faces, Scab, Skinny, Spillwords, Sybil, The Argyle, The Lake, Timada’s Diary, Unbroken, Unlikely Stories, Valiant Scribe, Variety Pack, Versification, Wild Violet, Wise Owl, Witcraft, Lothlorien, Yellow Mama, Young Ravens, Arlington Literary, Glacial Hills Review, Your Impossible Voice, Writers Resist and The Main Street Rag.