Gordon Thompson

Cloudy Destination: A Chosen Hubris

  —After October 6, 2023

We thin threads at heaven’s edge and everywhere calmly drift,

witnessing black smoke, gray drafts and white noise that fail to reach us

--bloodless debris blasted upward as bolts of mayhem

--unlike the gunmetal bodies of bulging low hanging

cumulus, intent on discharging fluids for life--

if with varied results

—but the sudden rise and fall

of dingy debris and dead remains of cyclopean rockets

of cloudy bits of burnt and broken flesh and stone, briefly in-flight:

Airy grotesqueries!

reporting awe, transmitting dread

across continents upon prevailing winds and waves

of repeated eruptions of bulbous totems, shimmering and sublime,

that compel and disarm hearts and minds before languidly spreading

the haze of sweeping extinction

that predators defend as more perfect

than the swords, dogs, and birds of a distant god or of any others.

Shira Dentz

Rising Every Day like Clear Glass

You won’t know how much I want to spill myself open with

you, bleed towards and with; but time edges us out and

away. If it didn’t, I don’t know where the end would be,

what it would mean to reach it. Each a skinny tributary, we

run together only in the wild.

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a riverine flow of relationship...     

Tributaries as Networked Selves

limits (time, space, code)

give the speaker’s longing shape.

kite, fly

a sari with jewels embedded

along its borders, free-flowing

with wind on bodies, with wind, everyone’s

a dancer. puddles of people

on ground around food-aid trucks.

clouds reflect in lake water

that seems to house them.

a storm vibrates on feathers

of a bird suspended in mid-air—

a ripple of curls

like ramen noodles,

embroidery,

a packet of echoes.

a miniscule fish

whose muscle click

to move through water

is louder (why?) than an elephant.

a muscle of people

muscle fish

a bird’s feathers

in water

on a muscle

of curls

click

to move

along borders