Alphabet City

The earth is a fungal patch
buried deep within the anatomy
of a colossal being.

And we?

Chagall 2018

She writes her poems from back to front
so to discover if to laugh or to cry
by her first draft of the final couplet

Without missing a step at the volta
she leaps backwards across quatrains
shifting moods in return toward home

She alights on the nascent, the nexus
between having thought at all or not,
ultimately and eventually

When the scream or the sonnet is done,
she tucks the pen behind her ear,
adjusts a curl then disappears

Chagall 2018

I am not
who you think
you are.

Chagall 2018

I am startled
by my own movement
sudden and reflected
in the glass that surrounds me.

Chagall 2018

her lips
moist
in the fog

sweet fig
lost
inside

a time
best forgotten
for now

Chagall 2018

It’s not
the way
you think
it is

Chagall 2018

How sad to think I will never again
see Haley’s Comet.

Chagall 2018

I awoke suddenly under the stars
soundlessly streaking across the sky,
and yelled out to Lawson that the other
dog was gone. Then she nuzzled my hand
and I told him to never mind.

Chagall 2018

Faster than Peter,
past acacia and carob,
I ran to the tomb.

We sang, we danced,
embraced and wept,
jumped up and down, cried out.

Our voices echoed:
the chamber there was empty
past the low doorway.

Alone in the damp,
except for our friend’s garments;
his scent was still there.

I ran past Mary,
leaving the rich man’s garden;
Arimathean

sweet hawthorn kindled
the fires of Golgotha,
from the day before.

Past olive, almond,
apricot, pine, turpentine,
I ran to tell them.

© Carlos Chagall, Easter Sunday, 2013

(with spunk and zany abandonment)
Chag – Chag – Chagallito baby
Chag – Chag – Chagallita baja

Chagall 2018