Friday, October 5, 2012

New location, same old shi.... I mean, the same high quality you've come to expect

Well, I'll be closing down for good here shortly, and would like to invite anyone who is interested to join me at my new digs. After much deliberation, I've decided to stick with Blogger, for reasons that are much too tedious to go into here. Anyways, I'm not sure how regularly I'll be posting, but I've been working on a bunch of new things and have some new books out as well, which I will be shamelessly promoting over there. 

eryops

Monday, July 9, 2012

Mint-flavored Toothpick

I'm closing up shop here for a while, maybe for good, I haven't decided yet. My reasons for doing so are complicated and tiresome so I won't go into them here. Suffice it to say it's time for a change.

Two more books will be available by the end of the year. Reverser in Neutral will be a selection of re-worked pieces from my first two collections (which I've stopped publishing) along with a bunch of unreleased stuff. The second will be called Brown Recluse. Chances are this is the last poetry I'll be sharing for a while, but again, who knows. I'll be hawking these books as well as the older ones on Twitter and Facebook and on street corners and such. I can still be contacted at carrioncall@gmail.com.

Thank you everyone who has read and commented these past two and a half years. It's been a pleasure having people to share this crap with.

Seann McCollum
July 9, 2012

Friday, July 6, 2012

Glacial Erratics


Wind-plucked cherry blossom petals gently scour
the asphalt beneath our feet, filling the potholes
and ruts with pink confetti. We veer off the street,
and slip through the unchained gates
of Lone Fir Cemetery, where sparkling sap decorates
the furrows of the cedars, showers of white resin
like frozen waterfalls, explosions of glue.
This past December, we both realized
we were no longer willing to live immobilized
in one another’s amber. And so we separated.

But now that spring has arrived, we stroll amicably
through the grassy halls of the petrified library
with its granite tomes arranged in rows,
volumes of sealed-shut history 
with spines bookmarked by pebbles,
black covers etched with frosted head shots
grinning and scarred with milky splatterings
of hardened tallow.
We skirt the dusty gardens of artificial flowers,
pause before the plastic dinosaurs awaiting the next meteor
at the foot of a child’s tombstone. 
We salute the headless cherubs, swat paths through clouds
of April no-see-ums. I catch a ladybug,
then uncurl my fingers to release it. The insect huddles
in the dry riverbed of my heart line, unwilling to depart
until I flick it from my palm.

We will not grow old together. We will never again sleep
beneath the same headboard. Our names will not share a slab
like the one you stubbed your toes against
the first time we ventured here, the first time I reached
for your hand. That fragrant night, you wore open-toes shoes
to show off your pedicure, the shiny pink petals
distracting me from noticing
the sluggish river flowing around us, the flood rising
as slow as chiseled names eroding from stone. 

This sunny afternoon three springs later, 
no longer trying to impress anyone,
you’ve traded your pumps for a pair of old Chucks
as we zigzag between the concrete obelisks,
pausing on a gentle swell to see where we have found ourselves,
two ill-fitting pieces of rock carried for hundreds of miles
and pages, and days in one other’s company,
now finding ourselves freed,
like boulders stranded when the ice recedes,
savoring the gentle warmth of the interglacial sun.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Fireflies


A glow worm illuminates the cavern of your ear
until a raven plucks it out, gulps it down. 
Beams of light burst from its nostrils, 
spill from the hairline cracks in its beak. 
I grab the bird by its feet, hold it before me like a lantern
as I pick my way through the pewter thicket,
carefully stepping over the bony roots.
Metal claws scrape the flinty paths
of the empty creek beds, sparks flashing 
in the shadows on either side. But I do not run, 
and eventually reach the clearing,
where only the closest tips of sedge are visible,
shimmering blades that scatter like minnows
when I swing my feathered beacon back and forth
then hurl it in an arc across the blackened meadow.
When I hear it catch the wind, a snapping kite,
I collapse into the soft, wet grass, 
turn my head and wait for a glow worm 
to twist its way into the shelter of my ear. 
I lie there on my back in the rain
and close my eyes
and listen for your footsteps.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Space Needle


As we sit here at Bauhaus Coffee on the hill,
the Space Needle grimaces at us through the glass,
its lid painted its original perky orange 
to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary, 
a retro futuristic lamp standing in front of an inky curtain
of early evening clouds. I gently run a hangnail
down your bare shoulder, tracing the boom
of your wrecking ball tattoo.A potted palmetto 
makes jazz hands at us, trying unsuccessfully 
to grab our attention.

Down in the muck of the amphibious city,
you tickle me with your gills, as on the wharf,
our slimy pink compatriots curl up like fists on beds of ice,
or are flung like floppy disco balls between the fishmongers.
Your inner arms are laced with scars, with rows 
of stitched closed lips.Your wrists dazzle 
with pearls that glow like teeth, 
like little moons sinking through the plume of silt
that billows up around us when we hit bottom.
We burrow like flounders into Puget Sound mud,
dreaming of fish that dart like rockets between the legs of the piers,
oysters that spin like saucers, dragging their nets behind them
like wedding veils as they blast off
into the soundless sea of outer space,
leaving constellations of bubbles in their wake
and leaving us behind, stitched together down there 
in the sludge beneath Seattle, ignoring all those fleshy morsels
that dangle close enough to kiss, knowing that
the prize embedded in every one
is merely a hook.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Lady MacGuffin

You kept your bottles of nail polish
jumbled inside a turquoise chest of drawers
on top of which perched a cast of the Maltese Falcon
you'd purchased from a thrift store years before.
Scars criss-crossed its black veneer,
exposing the chalky plaster underneath.
The film was on TV last Saturday evening.
I sat alone and watched it from my couch,
slathered in the achromatic glow, downing
tumbler after tumbler of bottom-shelf scotch 
to make myself forget that you were gone
and still would be tomorrow and tomorrow
lacquering my talons with filched obsidian.
The liquor made it difficulty to stay within the lines, 
the shaky brush kept slipping from the nail. 
The vapors caused my skull to start to spin
just as the dark heart of the story is exposed;
when, cradling that chunk of feathered lead,
Bogie mutters those wrenching final words.
You know what they are. Stripped of fury, 
signifying nothing. Sockets hollow and dead.
His gravelly voice so bitter, so resigned.
I hate admitting it, my love. I cried.