Daniel Stewart’s first collection of poems, The Imaginary World, was published in 2003 by Wolf Peach Press. His poems can be found in Arsenic Lobster, Crab Creek Review, Puerto Del Sol, Skid Row Penthouse and Talking River, among others. He teaches creative writing as part of the Writers In The Schools (WITS).Daniel will be reading @ the Mouth & Thistle reading series in Boise, ID @ Satchell's Grill on Saturday, March 10th @ 7pm: be there, have a beer and be happy.
Singularity
Fired from God’s .45 she tore a hole
in me black as a crow’s wing.
She found the universe dull as a sitcom, the laugh-
track louder with the voices of the dead than October
rain’s gallop across the roof, and so
collapsed. She languished, lilac, leopard;
I prayed to prowl with her, prey with her, lick
blood and meat with her, but God sucked
my tongue into His mouth and
bit. Rain, you are song when I long
for arms; the birds tuck heads
under wing, wings are weapons, like the wind
in the leaves; wings are choices, like the sea
throwing up stars on the sand. She tore
a hole in me the size of God
so heavy with gravity not even light
escapes me.
Against Flight
(previously published in Puerto Del Sol)
The sorrow that is night
sings deep into me
teeth and all—
drunk. The lake a blackened
eye. Waters gasped
against shore. Stars fluttered, moths pinned
against the sky’s black mat, with wind
wound like our fingers in each other’s hair,
wind bleeding ghosts from blur.
Once upon a time I stitched wings
to your back, folded a crown
out of tinfoil to stun the coils
of your hair and prayed
for salvation. Imagine, me along side
a King upon a throne in a kingdom
all our own. Our sun was a flower
made of sugar and saffron; it burned
only figuratively.
Love was slur was shadow was howl was
ache. Was whiskey breath, smokey
and warm, lips licked
to shine; was the crown of your hand
upon my head dragging me down
into the deeper dark
at your lap—
The wisdom that is flight beat
out of me like wings—
Blind with rising light, we faced
the autumn dawn. Gulls stirred and flew, cried,
cried, circled, flew.
A Particle Is Also a Wave
...We see that even individual, particulate electrons, moving to the screen independently, separately,
one by one, build up the interference pattern characteristic of waves.
—Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe
...the universal fabric agape with particles like mouths
that hunger only when you feed them
smile only when you seek them...black holes where your eyes
should have been. Sun
roared over us in a wave...
light the sin skin lusts so after
to the flesh is simply damage......the boy’s bared bicep bound in barbed
wire hackneyed as a crown of thorns...
Never in sorrow
Did Great Grendel’s fangs
Burrow through gristle
And bone for lust of the marrow...
Remember that brick I betrayed
your window with? Squint
and it’s a bouquet a throb with bees......experience is not solid. It is a choice,Grendel’s favourite pair were red, they kept his scaly
like picking socks to wear in the morning...
Taloned toes the warmest, and reminded him of human
Blood, his favourite kind, though fresh birthed
Kids could quell his thirst in a pinch...
it is a wave of possibility...
After, I am in two places at once...
...quarks, gluons, electrons
the petal-fragile blossoms of reality flower
only when sought...
How Godlike...one with you
one without...
Let down the coal-dark
coils of your hair
Veronica let it fan
out over the floor
of the dawn...
After the flame licked
its oil, soiled
its wick...a mote
in a cathedral
spidering down a shaft
of light
After what fires me
passes out of me
will my soul split sky
like a vapor trail
Will I stitch void at shuttle speed...
pinned deep in the dark......matter that is the cheek
of God...
a grain in the numberless glitter...
shaken off my sin like ash...dust sways with a breath...dust only dead
dazes in the dazzle...
skin shed...
my shadow
my atoms
wound in wind...
empirically possible to observe the particle in two places, not the particle cloned but the same
one in two places at the same time...Atoms make up only a sliver of the universal pie. The rest
is a dark heavier
than the stars its gravity
twirls into galaxy...
Experience is a choice we made
before we had a mind to choose ...dark matter dimples space where stars drag down...
a muscle nestled in its cave of bone...
Like a memory shared by two
people at the same moment...I exist in two places at the same time...Sup from His Righteous
Tears Veronica
the stain of His Sweat
is the map of the stars...
one with you one without...
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