{"id":5162,"date":"2013-03-11T00:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T04:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=5162"},"modified":"2013-03-11T16:32:22","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T20:32:22","slug":"at-sea-and-other-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/at-sea-and-other-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"At Sea and Other Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"At_Sea_585x585\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At Sea<\/span><\/p>\n

He is in the water, legs kicking<\/p>\n

like horses.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The water is joyous<\/p>\n

spinning around him its ribbons.<\/p>\n

The sky benevolent and vast.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Floating on his back he follows its curvature<\/p>\n

until he loses his balance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Under the surface he hears the creaking of ships<\/p>\n

shifting in their sleep<\/p>\n

and the echo of whale song.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He feels his sorrows sink down to the bottom<\/p>\n

tied to him still like so many anchors<\/p>\n

yet weightless, and thinks<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As long as I\u2019m here <\/i><\/p>\n

nothing can get me. <\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fires could blaze and ravage the land.<\/i><\/p>\n

I\u2019d watch it burn.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bathroom <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The lungs of the bathroom are filled with light<\/p>\n

and the breathing is clear.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The light seems even to give a light of its own<\/p>\n

you feel you wade in it<\/p>\n

as in bathwater<\/p>\n

and the falling sound of bathwater when a body lifts<\/p>\n

suddenly out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sometimes in a bathroom the drain hole looms large,<\/p>\n

as large even as the death of a child.\u00a0 Sound seems hollowed by it.<\/p>\n

As does hope.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That is the case here.<\/p>\n

Light infuses each fixture \u2013 the sink, the faucet, the mirror \u2013<\/p>\n

but the pipes run in the walls and in the floor, conveying<\/p>\n

an absence that pricks the light as space is pricked by time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Each morning the light pools in as before<\/p>\n

and the breathing is clear.<\/p>\n

But a hole looms<\/p>\n

like a moon full on the horizon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Human Behavior<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Black ops burst on the scene.<\/p>\n

Their intelligence gathering had long not been remembered<\/p>\n

vestigial structures with no loss of function<\/p>\n

the fearful surgery of airstrikes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No one is sure why this is happening<\/p>\n

like dolls they discover their placement in kitchens and bedrooms<\/p>\n

on a tide of wine that darkens the brain\u2019s water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Each one seems to him and herself smaller<\/p>\n

locked in the danse macabre<\/p>\n

the sky receding and the animals taking shelter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is ironic intimacy in the struggle.<\/p>\n

Can it be only hate that sustains the gridlock of this embrace?<\/p>\n

The mind like heat steadily and recurrently rises out of the body<\/p>\n

to survey the scene, take reprieve, and glimpse through a temporal capillary<\/p>\n

kiln-fired plates bursting against the wall.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The tragic mask writhes in the grotesquery of its contractions<\/p>\n

as a new moon squeezes through the gaping maw<\/p>\n

and its pearlescent meniscus ascends the quiet apex.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Potsherds refresh the tree of love<\/p>\n

and the sex is like warm summer rain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Petroglyphic<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lying in bed under layers of blankets<\/p>\n

our tired masses melt in the warmth<\/p>\n

two prongs of a fork stuck into the night.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The lumbering seeker in vain tries to find us.<\/p>\n

I hear him treading in the wrong direction<\/p>\n

completely off track, and fidget.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Swept up in the swirling currents of darkness<\/p>\n

gravity loses its grip<\/p>\n

and doors of perception swing open.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I listen to your breathing<\/p>\n

and make us two rowers<\/p>\n

moving as one upstream.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the final flicker of gray dim light<\/p>\n

I scratch a love poem<\/p>\n

on the cave wall of my mind.<\/p>\n

Then the black tide floods in.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Originally from Long Island, Matthew Homan currently lives in Atlanta and teaches philosophy at Kennesaw State University.\u00a0His poetry has previously appeared in\u00a0Literary Laundry<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He is in the water, legs kicking<\/p>\n

like horses.<\/p>\n

The water is joyous<\/p>\n

spinning around him its ribbons.<\/p>\n

The sky benevolent and vast.<\/p>\n

Floating on his back he follows its curvature<\/p>\n

until he loses his balance.<\/p>\n

Under the surface he hears the creaking of ships<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":5334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,219,199],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5162"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5342,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162\/revisions\/5342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}