Thomas Zimmerman

Blue

by Thomas Zimmerman

Your mother’s favorite color.

Joni’s greatest record.

Sky

and sky

reflected in the water.

Unoxygenated blood.

A lonesomeness,

an inwardness,

a bruise,

sweet ache,

and easy riffing:

blue ribbon

blue pencil

blue collar

blue moon

the boys in blue

out of the blue

blue in the face

the wild blue yonder

true blue

blue blazes

Bluebeard

blue-haired lady

Kind of Blue

Midnight Blue

Blue Train

Two Steps from the Blues

blue note

blue spruce

blue movie

beaten black and blue

The skim-milk hue

of white folks’ legs in summer.

“Too full o’ th’ milk

of human kindness.”

Heaven.

And the stars that fleck

your one woke eye.

Fighting Off the Wise

by Thomas Zimmerman

Since life’s at last smoothed out for him, he thinks

his sullen art should have more bite. And damned

Chopin is on the stereo again.

The major keys can make a person feel

a fresh world’s breeze and birdsong, pulse and breath.

The minor, though, they shade the shadow, dim

the dark. He finds this richer, deeper, strange,

a mate for his persona, fighting off

the wise. He contemplates his latest sketch:

a long-necked woman, dark hair parted down

the middle, forehead creased and eyebrows thick.

Eyes close-set, large, and ringed by . . . grief? ennui?

fatigue? The mouth, however, full-lipped, smiling.

Oh to tear the page to shreds. He can’t.

Horses in the Dark

by Thomas Zimmerman

The water rushing in, a tide, a flood:

unconscious mind. I dive, dream-lathered now,

my conscience sparking blue despite the blood

that flushes me, the wet that weeps, and—wow!—

I’ve been asleep so many years. I lean

against the darkness, let it straddle me

to spur, to gouge—my ass, my back, my spleen.

Like being broken in the dark. The sea-

tossed spume on moon-stung sand’s a bright white mane.

The hoof-kick’s quick and dashes out the brain. . . .

We prance in rain that sluices all the shit-

clogged gutters clean. Parisians ride gas-lit

above the catacombs. We hail Baudelaire,

who promises he’ll take us anywhere.

Being Made

by Thomas Zimmerman

Your favorite rock ’n’ roll band’s gotten old,

yes, older than the dead and distant stars

whose light you see tonight: a hundred years

to get here. Like the other dead you see

in dreams or under whiskey’s smoky spell.

You say your better self is lying on

the fold-out sofa bed. Your wife’s upstairs,

your needy dog will find you yet. There, on

the ottoman, the books you’ve stolen from.

Great leaders, sausages: you love them both

but couldn’t bear to see them being made.

Each maker rides a horse that nags them to

infinity. Your shadow and your breathing

corpse: Venn diagram in flux, dependent

on a streetlight, moon, or sun. Your forebears?

Doppelgängers, ghostly pentimento.

The Tower

by Thomas Zimmerman

Within the tower

of the heart, a

hunchback pulls

the bell rope. Some

impossible beloved’s

near but distanced

by brute fact:

imagination’s lack.

The square below,

a chessboard’s

chiaroscuro prison.

Bishop, knight, and

rook. Weak king.

Fresh-captured queen.

String up the poet,

kook who’ll die for

beauty. Unmoved

gods laugh darkly

at the quarking chaos

in the cosmos: death

beats art (for now),

a ragged cloud

obscures the

waxing moon.

Thomas Zimmerman (he/him) teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Big Windows Review https://thebigwindowsreview.com/ at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His poems have appeared recently in Haven Speculative, Sledgehammer, and Spellbinder. Tom's website: https:/thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com

Twitter: @bwr_tom Instagram: tzman2012