Field And Stream
Wisps of acrid smoke shimmer in
the shy rays of the rising sun.
Crows like motes in a bleary eye
circle, hypnotized by the smell of burnt
flesh and glint of twisted metal.
A broad stream runs through the field
and in its icy depths a slender figure
struggles, her rose-tinted gills fluttering
weakly, born down as she is by the
unforgiving weight of modern arms.
The Aggregate Man
She likes to introduce him as a man
of many parts – her little joke –
occasionally she goes on to demonstrate,
enumerate the provenance of his
various bits and pieces,
Here’s something we picked up in Cairo
not quite a perfect fit
but one can’t have everything
and, oh yes, this doodad cost a pretty penny
but we just had to have it.
Because his movements tend to be rather
jerky, not quite suited to cocktail-party
mingling, she prefers him
to stand in the corner once the show
is over, out of harm’s way.
So there he stands now, motionless,
his mismatched eyes
shifting almost imperceptibly, tracking
the random motion of bodies
and admiring their component parts.
Baltimore native Jeffrey Park lives in Munich, Germany, where he works at a private secondary school and teaches business English to adults. His poems have appeared in Requiem, Deep Tissue, Danse Macabre, Crack the Spine, Right Hand Pointing and elsewhere, and his digital chapbook, Inorganic, was recently published online by White Knuckle Press. Links to all of his published work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com.
