The First of Far too Many
I lost my first staring contest with a roach yesterday. Neither of us blinked; it turned away. It had better things to do.
Another Lost Staring Contest
This chair by the window and I have been scowling at each other for an hour and a half – raising our brows to track each pair of approaching headlights and letting our faces boil in red auras beaming from receding taillights swallowed down the starless throat of the frowning asphalt horizon. I have known for an hour and fifteen minutes the chair across from me would win. This café closes at midnight, and cars kept passing my window at forty miles per hour with no break lights lit. Forty cars were at least an hour away, laughing, with all their windows open – your idiolectic giggle mingling in the breeze.
Still Frame
Potential energy of stationary objects endows them with vivacious beauty. Self-studied leaves boast about being subjects of conversation, while their trees, who've survived generations of such propaganda, listen to each new budding breed with firmly planted roots. Aluminum ladders are safest, or oak reinforced with steel, but those of rope and wire should be condemned by the Roman Catholic church for their gratuitous wiggling. But everything moves at some pace, even when not of its own. Barnacles collect gracefully, hold silent cheers under their breath until restless boats and whales sleep in calmer waters, unaware even those seas are cradled in a sphere swept up in the twirl of galaxies. When you sleep, groping through a world of intangibility, your chest betrays your stillness even as your eyelids try to conceal their eyes' nauseating somnambulism. But when you fall silent in thought, chasing, retracing the intangible, breath inches from your mouth, a cautious burglar, your eyes lock onto a distant spec. And even though your mind is reeling, it's taken you 30 minutes to take a first sip of now-cold coffee, which sits just as still, patiently cradling your reflection.
About the Author:
With a fiendish addiction to all things caffeinated and a thorough knowledge of how to waste time, Ink disrupts his neighbors’ dreams by taking recycling out at odd times and singing along too loudly with whatever song fits his mood. He has one self-published poetry collection (Miserable with Fire) and one book published by Piscataway House Publications: Death Loves a Drinking Game. Ink’s most recent chapbook, 61 Central, is available from Finishing Line Press. He is the founder and EIC of the Stanza Cannon zine — a quarterly publication for audio poetry submissions.
These pieces are a part of Issue Two: CHRONOS. Read more like it here.