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

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.