edge of evening, edge of storm
everything is just short
of something
in this moment: almost
dusk,
almost rain, almost time
to go
home, almost tempting
to grab that almost-wet
flagpole
and say
hey God,
free shot
Sahara haze: a plague of 2020
breathe in bone-remnants
of the angel-slain firstborn;
what blood can cover
our own doorposts, ward away
one more chastisement for who
we have failed to be?
the discarded of this land
cry out from dark soil;
we who exist between dust
and dust must give an answer
Unsafe
In which Erato, muse of love poetry, admonishes her followers:
Enough.
Still your trembling
(from need
or
exhaustion)
pens.
Come out from
(on one side)
your tangled burnings and yearnings,
long looks and looks of longing,
(and on the other)
your thickets of friction and fingernails,
shudders and satiated silence.
Stand here,
on the bridge between yielding
yes
and claiming
Yes,
and do
not
breathe,
for not even air can be steady here,
where all is slick and shaking
and everything rests upon
one
point,
thin as two layers
of skin
(and only one
of those
yours).
Wait.
Look down.
Now write.
Steve Brisendine is a writer, poet, occasional artist and recovering journalist living and working in Mission, KS. He is the author of two collections from Spartan Press: The Words We Do Not Have (2021) and the upcoming Salt Holds No Secret But This (2022). He was a finalist for the 2021 Derick Burleson Poetry Prize.