ᴛᴡᴏ ᴘᴏᴇᴍꜱ ʙʏ ꜱᴀᴍᴜᴇʟ ꜱᴛʀᴀᴛʜᴍᴀɴ
Some nights, when on a tag along
with the chrysalis,
many avenues present themselves.
Some venues meet the scimitar
on a cutting board, while others
are the fire that cooks the fish –
saucepan eyes unblinking
as it’s tossed into the pot.
A red ant colony is up in arms
over their hill being divested –
raccoons cry in impatience
while on a scavenger hunt
for pickled herring.
We’ve yet to witness omnishambles
of brain spraying on the inside of a microwave –
we’re not seasoned enough for that.
Lastly, we’re thankful
for the incendiary agents in action –
flitting through conduits and capillaries
to seed infection.
The discord between mind
and our own matter is abominable,
little fires that can be prevented.
After the poem “1.8” from “Sonnets to Orpheus”
by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Recounting the steps to our plight
is the same as drowning above ground,
submerged in the spectral pall
culled from our lesser selves.
Two separate annals converge
over a great expanse,
incisors imprisoned in the rubble of triviality –
bent on destructing each other –
reprisal, followed
by the inevitability of death.
Staring at my glass,
a minute water nymph casts a web
of cosmic tinkering,
sentiment clinking around.
These silhouettes meander
in irreverence, backs turned, shifting
one brackish helix after another.
Paroxysms and their antecedents
are caged in shrieking mosaics,
fresher than the fish in the lake,
steamrolling until history caves in on itself –
box of ambiguous intimations.
Later, sleep comes easy to me,
light as wisps of terry cloth.
The next morning, I’ll go to the sink
with a countenance warped
by lesions in the memory.
The naiad will rise
from the sink
in swirls of barnacle and brine –
cause my throat to freeze shut,
a reliquary of nostalgia.
[Author Bio: Samuel Strathman is a poet, author, educator, and editor at Cypress: A Poetry Journal. Some of his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Train, White Wall Review, Quadrant, and elsewhere. His first chapbook, "In Flocks of Three to Five" will be released by Anstruther Press later this year. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.]
