The poems are still available on the magazine’s website.
This is a block of tarot-based poems I had been working on for some time.
Primarily, they are a weird combination of before & after my style kind of switched up due to being drafted before & revised extensively after.
However, “Justice” was also written on the 2019 Seattle-Portland trip that produced “Malevolent” & “Ace of Wands.”
Wheel of fortune
You can’t out-maneuver true north.
Direction upon direction becomes
stagnation & you cannot claim
movement when you end up in
the same place — love, you’re shaking,
you’re pressing your body into the wind
& screaming demands to the stars that led
you astray & I can’t help — as the priestess
mellows at the bottom of the deck, hear the
hard clink of sunstone meeting the windowpane.
I don’t think you can meditate yourself out
of this place with the mocking yellow walls
& the bed that tied knots in your spine,
know the directions & count the stars
& say your affirmations until the silver
mountains catch the sun & still — this is
hell. Tear out all your wiring & sing
all your curses. Can’t blame the hardware,
the software done glitched when you dreamed
these things — dreamed his face lit
by the burn of your stars & imagined
it was you he was looking at.
Judgement
The last moments of the last day
drifting particles of sunlight filtered
through the echoing emptiness
between planets that had moved
only so close for only so long
& now went elsewhere to be
hidden away, holding our breath,
gone in a downstream float
through void & echo & empty,
we won’t shine forever, love
see me now or you may never;
see through all the ghosts, all
the clouds, all the wanting, all
these moving parts to being
alive, so easy to slip & fall
apart — to scatter & have all
our words wound into whisper,
into echo, into the hidden bones
that give shape to the universe,
but only after buried.
The Sun
Earthbound & bright, still
glowing as if there could be
a point in glowing — all that
energy just to burn & be
seen — while the best parts
of being alive are see-through.
Your skin may as well be the same
as the pattern as the wall because
nobody gives a shit about you,
what you do, or if your hair is a mess;
it’s a generous feeling & it makes you
feel the same — just living
is no better or no worse; something
so satisfying in being alive &
disregarded, in not hating it
at least for now. Feels as if
your mother had tucked you in
under your green bunny quilt
& you almost forgot your condition —
my condition, our collective
condition — bones & nerves
& muscles & skin haunted
& occupied. No way to smoke
the bastard out of this house —
& no exorcist has the right — in nomine
patris — faith or fear to evict this
squatter — et Spiritus Sancti. No prayer
to cure or cast out, no way of telling
which parts are bone or phantom
from the inside. Seems the joy
is in the forgetting, in seeing the whole &
not the parts, in a high-noon sun screaming
our shadows back into our heels.
9 of Swords
Let me cut out my stupid tongue —
ghost after ghost carved & exorcised,
the blade scraping until there is no light
left in the cave; full dark, same as night,
walls & floor & sky, an inkstain smeared
through the pages of every letter,
every story, every song, phantom blood
from phantom limbs; reading the spread
like the constellations, all meaning
an uneducated guess, a gesture of faith,
the point being the querent has missed
the point & in spirit plants the same seed
that grows the tangled tongue, that grows
a conjured heart for a conjured love
thorn-throated as she sings the night in
& with ritual accuracy cuts,
until the hum of distant stars echo.
Emptiness meets emptiness.
The Hermit
Tear him down from the sky & ask why —
goddamn it, why? — why must we lead
with ‘showing’? Why can we not bury
our ‘knowing’ with the unsaid? Define
our being in mystery & dream ourselves
sacred again? Tendril by tendril, gray & ribbons,
catch hold of his beard & lower his face to face
mine & ask — fucking why? — why is bravery
the new knowledge? Why are we trading in bad takes?
Why can you say the wrong thing at the right volume
& make a career out of it? I can’t count the people
I’ve known with no self awareness, friend. Tell me
what has happened to us to make us so loud & so
sure. Can we never be quiet? Same as death may be,
cold & unknowable, & hard to sell — hear the echoes
of us in it, the lusty roar of the waves as they eat
away the shores of our cities & sweep us out
into & among the dark.