Night air carries superstition, poison’s veil,
cry of hunting owl, unbound mastiff.
Deceit manages the moon.
Dire blaze of comets fall
whips at cries of disembodied voices,
chaos of sordid death by border lies.
My reflection is running water,
an impulse through exile’s grasping past
profound as sin and consecration.
Floating in inertia, admiring
ennui through its idling passage,
I cup my hands to my mouth, rising
in terror, singing for redemption.
Sky streaks lavender and orange to lowering blue.
Night chill rises, flicking at pants legs, leaf piles,
dampens sidewalk to footstep skate.
Beyond the greasy click of a security gate,
last birds circle to settle on a sleeping roost,
scavengers slink the hedge lines,
eroded wastes of tree root, fence rot.
Phone-nervous, the late-working husband,
lover late with wine and Chinese
hustles towards an unsettled greeting.
The map of the world has changed
since I photographed you;
faded in its frame,
ink lighter with the seasons.
No Siam, no Burma,
one Vietnam.
Across the room
your cheekbones are sharper,
hair shorter, bright blonde as
your lips and nails are red.
Aroma from a whiskey tumbler reveals
polite wine lost to single malt.
Surgical, your laugh slices the room,
precise as heels across an Aztec tile floor.
You step out where I stand
to smoke, to stare at the waxing moon.
Comfortable in the cold,
mist tendrils rising
across morning garden,
dew-dampened boots
dry in the rising wind.
Cracking this year’s journal,
I release pleasure to the river.
Behind a dome of December clouds,
the sun struggles.
Slivers After Creeley’s The Flower I think I layer tensions like bottles shattered in ditches the thirsty refugee hides. Each faulting gesture blocks breath, catches in my chest, cracks knees in a fall. Tension is a wasting blade It slices that one and that one and that one. R.T. Castleberry‘s work has appeared in Roanoke […]
Read more "Slivers | After Creeley’s The Flower"Impressions of the Sickhouse I watch in the world, amused by massacre and gin, homeland walls, holiday wars. Viewed from the barred gate darkened surveillance cars prowl, aimless under winter afternoon skies. Cold weather tramps straggle past construction generators, pavement gaps, work order water leaks. I take into consideration the symbolic and the sin. I […]
Read more "Impressions of the Sickhouse"An Animal or a God Paint glistens yellow in the night rain, dark Bacardi pours easy over ice. Like the ghostly colonials of Apocalypse Now— lost to France, dying in Vietnam, I’m stranded in this tiger wilderness. Half-awake, sleep leeched by dread sense, I avoid the sun, seal doors and blinds against mutations of neighbor […]
Read more "An Animal or a God"R.T. Castleberry’s writing has appeared in Comstock Review, Green Mountains Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, The Alembic, Pacific Review, RiverSedge and Deep Water Literary Journal, among other journals. He is a co-founder of the Flying Dutchman Writers Troupe, co-editor/publisher of the poetry magazine Curbside Review, an assistant editor for Lily Poetry Review and Ardent. His work has […]
Read more "American Mercy"R.T. Castleberry’s writing has appeared in Comstock Review, Green Mountains Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, The Alembic, Pacific Review, RiverSedge and Deep Water Literary Journal, among other journals. He is a co-founder of the Flying Dutchman Writers Troupe, co-editor/publisher of the poetry magazine Curbside Review, an assistant editor for Lily Poetry Review and Ardent. His work has […]
Read more "How Close to Danger"R.T. Castleberry’s writing has appeared in Comstock Review, Green Mountains Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, The Alembic, Pacific Review, RiverSedge and Deep Water Literary Journal, among other journals. He is a co-founder of the Flying Dutchman Writers Troupe, co-editor/publisher of the poetry magazine Curbside Review, an assistant editor for Lily Poetry Review and Ardent. His work has […]
Read more "The Fiction of Family"
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