Ryan Skrabalak
four poems from Assembled Climate
A boy: very insecure: a boy: too big: he looks believable shining falling: owls he gives slightly: language is crow long open vowels like a wolf but hollow speech from a feather: every source a body to care wary of company: we slide in each other: almost happy
surrounded in fossils
breathes
and breathes
our moon Suddenly
it rises
passed in your milk
I have a sensation:
rocks on their backs
something spiritual
death like death
sound of the motor
in the sound of
some former life
loved once
shouting dusk
pumping
centuries laughing:
give back to me
your soft
Among the brown galaxies A black crab
Aramaic claws
hurry over stars
Alone inside myself I love
whatever can pry loose
waving and foolish, I sway
come eat me through
night's shining boulder
whisper my dream. I have lost
you? I sleep I wake boil
thought sweep howl sudden clear
hurry in an eyeball mad
the bite of salt
for centuries
the name his father gave him
Suddenly: honey breaks
out, jumping up a mouth long for saltwater
I walk soaked lonely a wild inspection of a large high ocean
Eastern over the rail on an endless frail land thickened the roses
that hold up the three-quarter moon
pale and urgent so slow the clouds an eye
alone formed long ago. Compressed like us
then sent out: I am separated from myself
down here. So I am. Behind these and behind that
and behind the running boys behind the men the twigs the heels of a drum running
toward the dancing. A stripped tree at my center. Hanging high behind