Artwork courtesy J. Zachary Rothstein

 

Metal Worker

Instinct wraps its forgotten in the sweaty lamplight,

and the heated trim asks of the dim bowl, the iron stage,

what dark task is drawn to half an owl and three dragonflies,

to the wispy knives in an old dartboard, a pool of fish

around a petal serving as the cape of memory, or what you

found it meant knocked down and stepped over. Arsis,

twin emblem of tea stain and bird song, harlequin of truth

“inside the heart of dream.”* In a shred of fantasy

and a reawakened collar, time, not your heart, hid an abyss

of bear hide and bird nest, day of carnival and fire, mist

and tree lifted by the future back wear of growth, lake stamp

and green spark back in the gear grass. A sighing of guitar

and kettle written in the labor, in the pink needle of the presale

of a curtain. What wildness holds down this rendering of leaves

anticipation spreads manikin to manikin?

*Lorca