Full, From the Grave

by Craig Kirchner

The limo, gray leather seats, typical soft ride seemed to be driving itself. A cool, hushed feeling of finality and freedom at about 50 per, willing without manipulating, despite the new rain, the driver barely touching the wheel.

Occasionally rubbing the small container in his right pant pocket, Colton ponders Coppola’s Count crossing the ocean, with his boxes of native soil, the ship on autopilot, sailing itself to the new land, the next red light.

An Altoids tin, what’s that, three Tbsps. maybe? Alyson sitting next to Colton in her full-length Victorian and black lipstick, tells him she saw him spoon the dirt and that she collects clipped nails in a glass case. She keeps it in her room, and frequently contributes, its major characteristic of course, it is dead, cut from life.

Colton’s canister speaks in unfamiliar tones, never feels quite the same each time he touches it. Only an hour old, it has become the charm, his luck piece, the heirloom he’ll never lose, the collection he never had, the never handed-off inheritance that evolves against his leg, and subtly intimates it will eventually grow something if given a chance, perhaps help with his sleep.

Dream Doctor

by Craig Kirchner

Silence between the bedclothes

on a quiet afternoon,

has a rose reverence, a calming pace,

a new tranquility, defined by space.

The bed is sturdy,

four legs solid on the floor,

mega-stones set just so by Ancients,

pushed under the window with a view of the lake.

The geese like June Taylor dancers

all turn at once, choreographed in Vs,

and me pondering nefarious formations,

to a deep lazy sleep.

Grasping pointlessly at reeds and mud

as the lake drains through an hourglass funnel,

falling to dust, dirt,

and deep dimensions below the bed,

where worker ants are sticking to the plan,

stacking symmetrically, motivated

to give time space and space time

in a prime meridian castle for their Queen.

The Dream Interpreter arrives with a clipboard,

measuring latitude and longitude,

describing taste as color, intuition as liquid

and pain in geometric shapes.

REM eyes dot anew tunnels of archeology and Druids.

Geese and Jurassic antennae stay busy,

anticipating his monthly visit, through circles

of pink quilt, mounds, sneezes, and Stonehenge.

Neon poem

by Craig Kirchner

Throw away your mascara,

mousse and underwear.

Wear these lines for a week,

just one week, not a long time.

Let the words mold your face,

drape your shoulders,

your delicate breasts.

Let the lyric infuse your dreams,

scent your pillows,

press your thighs with invisible weight.

At the end of the week

if these Emperor’s clothes

are your neon poem,

call me. I’ll be here on hold,

won’t have eaten but won’t rewrite.

You are new ink that will not dry.

Craig Kirchner is retired and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen.

He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems in a folder on a laptop. These words tend to keep him straight.

After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Poetry Quarterly, Decadent Review, New World Writing, Neologism, The Light Ekphrastic, Unlikely Stories, Wild Violet, Last Stanza, Unbroken, W-Poesis, The Globe Review, Skinny, Your Impossible Voice, Fairfield Scribes, Spillwords, WitCraft, Bombfire, Ink in thirds, Ginosko, Last Leaves, Literary Heist, Blotter, Quail Bell , Ariel Chart, Lit Shark, Gas, Teach-Write, and has work forthcoming in Cape, Scars, Yellow Mama, Rundelania, Flora Fiction, Young Ravens, Loud Coffee Press, Versification, Vine Leaf Press, Edge of Humanity and the Journal of Expressive Writing.