three poems

Steve Gilmartin

Natural

Take this and remember…

To land and face famine in this meticulous city, surrounded by huge, wind-sculpted upwellings, a phytoplankton banquet meant to bring forward one final vibrant animal.

Searching the recesses for moisture, cord nervling buds in the fissuring, light scattering and sifting down mind’s cold flower.

We look for a startle response to inflate the world text to quarto, folio.

The story reads a self called “you” transpiring backwards into the deep. It will have you enriched for safekeeping.

Canyons flood and palms upturn. World inclines toward the chain and ladder option.

Boxed-in beings scurry away to mate and produce new bodies, believing themselves hidden as we track their bio prints traversing mining platforms.

A successfully suspended many-lipped member colony reacts with hinging and unhinging pheromone trails. Such harnessed creature euphoria pumps up even undisciplined stakeholder musculature.

We have many movement models.

In absorption myths, the key is called uplift, where ROI workpaths lead to and from encoded bioresponsive meat vehicles, careening joyously between clouds.

Twinned programmable animalia appearing within naturalized scripts and settings can proliferate unabated.

ADHD

1

My pockets acquired secret mathematics—it happened during N—and by the next day my mind had become pelican-like, skimming over and then diving into the cool glass of knowledge. The knowledge felt satisfying at first, but I later learned it was filled with microplastics.

History is made using a lot of cheap notebooks.

The sky hypnotizes me into thinking it looks normal. Daily life is dummy text. I’ve waited years for it to develop into actual content.

Mistakes are becoming units of rhythm. I call time out and stare at pocked wood. I find myself listening to the spiraling diatribes of the dead.

The loudspeaker says that over the horizon everything’s sweet sweet sweet and in 3/4 time. Every unit of air contains a subliminal amber alert.

2

Things are looking up. The light orders me around and keeps blowing red air into my head. Hauntings are avoided by devising 2-9 split word orders and making them march. Long and hard.

I need to read up on the Trombone Model of the Unconscious. In this, our virgin universe, does it all come down to embouchure?

3

I just finished my writing assignment: big black boots are beautiful reflectors of light.

How It Plays

market sprung. balls on the table. push in. ninety-eight-leg creep. spring now. four items boiling. cool. over-the-knee laughter. lost look. this way that way. tight around the calf. be busy. whole to its intent. summary silence. on bended. all-purpose tension. force fed. radiating shes. first remember why. beauty command. turn left at the click. heel raised. spring comes. cards in play. calf pushed forward. identify yourself in relation to the question.

untidy spot. hung from the casing. beachfront. in different lights. powered his appeal. conscious clothing. spring’s here. earth still arming, warring, ringing unanswered. you’re in season. fashion war. summery bell. photo-op detention fence. distressed and sexy. hop in while you can. star-bound entertainment.

energy jump. into canned state. turn the air on. less myself. state rests. two beats. boxed and unheard. no blood for three measures. unstable constellation. it’s spring. don’t move a peg. marketable sunday pilot. roughed up and regular. I’m in. history masking. mountain arrangements. the adrenal gland hits. find its sweet spot. opens us. meds and beaked veins. fear glued down. repetition truth. guard talk everywhere. hop in. controlled interior favorites. physics-forced embarkation. looking for someone. into life and tent heating. Friday eyes. a provocation. I’ll call that new. spring’s here. their blood is worn. it isn’t mine.

kind doctor, oh captain. heavy lidded. add policy. pressed and dressed reporter. fourth-quarter nerve seduction. tide ocd’ing. doing the work. going in going out. definitional slap party. just over the rim. outstanding water. free to leave. rolling out. knives in a barrel. heel raised. thinning the herd. atop a hill. down Mexico way.

ran home monday. sold short tuesday. sis boom bombing. nothing to forget. soft loud rose. enter navy. cancel the garden. spring all over. hot-stone speeches. white audience raft. inverse modeling. everybody burns. scattering the no ones. vibrato stretched. on a compressed spring. wax it way up. fighting the first act. a four-piece huh. heavy and pearling. treaded water Wednesday. worn sky watch. my big-city pass. dowsing hard and sailing. claw-marked temperatures.

bought stuff of dreams. coaxing in the headline. slick matinee satin. run the mineral extraction. we ate and dispersed. same-day materiel. rolling in D. lost faculties. shadow-dropped hallucinations.

last one out. shell-white fortune. full stop fill-in-the-blank. what sold? last week is blind. opposition dashboard. arrows dressed thick. quick drying metaphor. put him on a mountain. damsel fair. ran downtown. those poor dumb people. mind what’s taken. they can’t be allowed. perpetual ballroom lead. follow the epaulets. very patient metal. around the horn. shade financed. heavy-lidded spring. plowed down and moving. foreign pile-up sector. just sit and draw. we would be building.