The following is an excerpt chapter from Ms. Never (published November 1, 2019) by Colin Dodds, whose poetry was previously published here at Visitant. The most recent description of Ms. Never: Ms. Never is the story of a woman with apocalyptic depression, and a man who buys human souls using the terms of service in […]
Read more "Ms. Never | Joel’s Last Night, First Night – A Short Story"Out to Find Ourselves we do you at the foot of a precipice skirting the brink this abyss I ahead of a glacier ahead of the curve And the crevice doesn’t move unless the earth beneath it moves it doesn’t shift unless the landmass shifts The glacier moves albeit slowly as the tectonic plates upon […]
Read more "Out to Find Ourselves"The Secret Lives of Things I want to learn from slime molds How they take the shape Of tapioca or icicles or pretzels Pink toothpaste, brown cigars Sucking nutrients From rotting leaves and wood And then become blue crusts Yellow splotches, tawny curlicues And vanish. Their weird diversity and transience Speak to me of beauty […]
Read more "The Secret Lives of Things"Night, Cyan Young woman, come and sit with us ghosts of wisdom on the veranda under the shelter of a night sky that is cyan and purple in color. Forget the shadows of his arms Instead feel the darkness of a summer night as crickets in their chorus begin to share with you all the […]
Read more "Night, Cyan"Dark Raisin The drinking glasses stay in bed Tight and dry in a shadow chest Light invades the belly-hole She’s been trying to cleanse for weeks Walls will harden under harsh neglect Violent piety will crack riverbeds Our Lady of Guadalupe lives in a candle jar Who told her a belly glow would placate her […]
Read more "Dark Raisin"Your friends are not your friends Your friends are not your friends. There is no such thing as a friend. The wasp devours the honeybee on his dutiful search For the final flower. The flower stagnates, smelling sweet for no one. If it’s true that you kill the things you love Then she loved me […]
Read more "Your friends are not your friends"Between Grief and Joy The beaten path is nondescript, a right of way through pristine lawns and tree-lined streets of gracious homes, well-shaded in the heat of day and sound as caves on winter nights, with mantled fires burning low to warm the dens of hibernating souls. You head due south beyond the park and […]
Read more "Between Grief and Joy"Husband: All Earth I. Led Zeppelin on Spotify, movie posters on walls, Coors Light and Old Spice, here she dove softly into cool dust. At home, it was canyons and dirt, long showers after boring sex. Her husband: all earth. Here, they were all bodies, purple Gatorade, no sleep. II. Third Eye Blind on Spotify, […]
Read more "Husband: All Earth"Political Harvest Toward the east Through back porch screen Clouds are forming their ranks Against the sun A crow’s distant cawing Gives voice to solitude Worn like a thorny cloak And mocks that final promise Hope and lifeline once Now become more lethal Than foreign shrapnel Pines murmured all night In their high, strange tongue […]
Read more "Political Harvest "The Stick Dawn is doing dawn, breaking its yolk. At the bank of the Trinity there is oneness. It is in small part, about the destiny of a conifer branch, cracked in an early winter’s wind. At the shoreline, its rhythm laps at the graveled bank, bald as a drumstick, thick as a child’s innocent […]
Read more "The Stick"