Down The House


words in the faces

of these children

complexly ours when


the math couldn’t

be more

simple


you can’t burn a page

and read it


and having abandoned them

to fire


we don’t get

to go on

talking water

Algorhythm


We are

what the setting sun makes


of bird nests in the neighborhood trees


clumps of matter

that don’t


except as we are beautiful

except as we give shelter

except as we are beautiful


rhythm of something

beat out by feet and wings

on the sidewalk

in the air


rhythm that would

be nothing


except as we are beautiful

West End of the World


The steep steps

of the steel slide

she climbed


when we stopped at the park

after a day’s drive


and climbed

and climbed

and climbed


until the word lost all

meaning in the act

little shoes

little rocks


as gravel below her

ducks on the pond driving in


if I tell you a steel slide

is of the west am I

a liar


she slipped at the top


if I tell you the world almost came

to an end am I

your mother


the time you jumped off the roof

when we were kids

in this west


where the summer slides and shingles

burnt the backs of

our legs if


I tell you I’ll

die here

don’t


call a doctor

call a duck


and when it lifts off the pond

don’t shoot

All Along

                  after George Oppen


The day’s offerings

don’t know about the end

of days


I know the poet said it was

a brick, daughter


waiting in the wall with

your name


but I say it’s this apple

that grew

for you


all along.

After John Fogerty


long as I concede to light

its candle


I’m gone and coming

home soon


I won’t

no I won’t


lose the highway long

as I concede


to light

Andrew Baron's life is the same uneventful miracle of biology it was the last time he appeared in Otis Nebula.

Images by Elfie Hintington courtesy of the L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

Copyright © 2016, Otis Nebula Press. All rights reserved.

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