Her tears carved cracks in my smile-
That branched with a disfiguring certainty
Between sharp elations and the
Impassionate clink of cheap plastic.
A receded laughter disseminates in a cherry stitch
Spitting through insipid pin stripes and numb twenties
That tip for hourglasses with salty grains and tight patchworks.
As she places portions of her own stone
By golden cuffs and crystal graveyards,
I will wither from my teeth
Suspended from her dying skin
Until I fall-
Like she will from me.
The word ‘abandoned’ spilled from her receding tongue
Circumnavigating a 2 a.m. shell of acrid halos
As it teased the curiosity of an Atlantic tide.
From plastic cubes we watched nature deform itself.
I pressed my cheek against the splinters in my sleeves
And stole the scent of her thoughts soaked in brandy and nicotine.
Opaque syllables watched salt gather to the brink of my lips
Until the word seeped from the lesions in our throats.
A city of colors
Carries perfumes
Sweet and salty
Red and white
Columns leading cuddled
Hands of blue and caressing
Fluorescent concertos of
Merchants, music, and mirth
Like the smudge of
Yellow baskets which
Rotate as casual comets
Just above delicately
Threaded fingers
Curving into tips of
Painted lips parted and
Pressed in brief to me.
Here, points of light
Travel on strings
Of blue and green like
Cameras in cities through
And past the smell of Sunday
Here, dirt filled blocks
Tied to red ropes
Mutate to the
Reverberation of silver
Piano hammers and other
Jovial vibrations
Here, the corona
Shifts with pointed
Pressures to distances
Dictated by iron cuffs
Pulling against my skin
The Subtle Story
By Caleb Krause
I.
A soft sun sits nestled
Between floating vapors of
Unearthly puffs of hills and
Cumulus cliffs in lands not too
Distant of the imagination
Slow sweeps of wind
Carried like whispers on waves
Across the lips of a lake
Rush to shore to touch the
Dancing cat tails and shake
The chattering trees
Spotted with shadows of
Kissing leaves that sway
With summer dreams
Undisturbed and sleeping
A little girl stretches against
The hind legs of a golden
Coated dog whose name is
Dawn
II.
Dim skies sink the sun
As shadowed clouds hide and
Seek spotted wisps of starlight
As silent as the shaded specters
Stalking the sleeping girl and
Her golden dog
A sinister step through bushes
Brings bodies like humans
With sunken eyes and
Mischievous smiles spitting
Sparks and fire like
Conflagrated laughter
Their bodies and hands
Shift and wave like the
Air of a fervid heat
As they dance to the screams
Of the little girl and the
Rising rage of Dawn
Feeble and fearful the
Girl covers her tears in the
Curves of her sleeves as Dawn
Splits and slashes the
Fiends until the night
Resigns in fire
At the absence of
Sign and sound
The little girl
Lifts her head to
Ceaseless winds and
Ashen skies missing
Both the sun and Dawn
III.
Hopeless hands brush
Hair and tears from
A face too new to
Find paths in solitude and
Instead pleas for Dawn
To come home
Through blurry vision
Her company comes in the
Manner of a ragged doll
With buttons like eyes and
A sewed on smile that can
Never be wept away
The girl giggles as
The doll twirls on one leg
And presents its arms
In a silent ta-dah
Seamed in off colored
Stitches to its simple body
She brings the doll in her arms
With the best intent of
Forever being friends and
Together they step into a
Thicket of woods in search of
Dawn
IV.
Naked trees with dry
Dreary skin smell of
Burnt autumn as they
Cut and coil a ghostly air
Her footsteps leave fractured
Leaves in her wake
As her doll skips
Over sticks
To be by her side
In a twist of roots
Like serpents at sea
A black hooded mouse
Taps a rock on a tree and
Checks for change in a static sky
Taps and Checks
Taps and Checks
V.
What are you doing little mouse?
I am doing the work of a rainmaker.
So you tap a rock on a tree?
By tapping a rock on this tree I bring the rain.
Doesn’t the rain come as it pleases?
The rain comes through the work of a rainmaker.
How do you know tapping a rock on a tree will bring the rain?
Because I know that it has happened before.
Does it happen all the time?
It happens when I tap a rock on this tree.
How many taps does it take?
Sometimes forty, sometimes one-hundred and forty.
Does your effort ever fail?
It always rains through the work of the rainmaker.
Have you seen my Dawn while tapping your tree?
I have seen the dawn while tapping this tree.
In what direction did my Dawn go?
Dawn leaves from the East and wanders to the West.
Then I too will travel to the West, thank you mouse.
As the girl and her doll
Leave for the West
The hooded mouse
Taps the tree and
Rejoices in rain
VI.
A set scene of forest pillars
Like rigid earthly soldiers
Draws the little girl’s face to
Curve the cut of her lips
And pull the tilt of her attention
To the toll of her steps
Now tucked tight into
The hinge of her hug
Her doll puts a hand
To its smiling stitch and
With an arc of its arm
Blows her a kiss
Confidant with
Care and company
The little girl’s
Thought is caught by
A blanket of fog cutting
A clammy walk of bricks
A solitary street lamp
Sallow in color
Scatters sparkles off a
Reflective curb on a
Popper’s boulevard
Cold and cloaked with night
Her cautious steps echo with
Seclusion as she calls into
The cracks of the street
For an essence of kindness
VII.
Cut and coated in angular shadows
An ally forks to the left of the little girl’s steps
It extends its reach into houseless depths
Littered with willowed heads and weeping grins
Carefully toeing past couples cuddled and coughing
She locates a corner by a decaying barrel of cradled fire
Two young soot stained faces sit cautiously in her camp
Brother and sister clothed in coarse cloths alike in chin and cheeks
The dark eyed brother tempts a silence of time to share a toy
A small plastic copy of a golden dog on a chipped grassy base
Collective tears sketch rivers past a quivering lip
The little girl cups the toy as it recalls her longing for Dawn
Engulfed by fret and fear a collapse of conscious dictates her actions
Plastic edges cut and bleed with heartbeats echoing the pulse of her dashing footsteps
VIII.
Her breathless pace
Reveals a ragged road
Lined with the remains of
An autumn crop
Tarnished beams of
A cloudy sun
Brush tips of sulking stalks
Confined by fenceless posts
A limp doll flops in stride
Nestled in her right arm and
A plastic burden of guilt
Tight in her palm
Too ashamed to keep but
Too lonely to let go
The little girl weeps
Her valediction to dusk
IX.
With wings infolded
On the peak of a cross
Watching with wisdom
Rests an albino crow
And beneath his caw
Is a weak witted friend
With humanlike holes
In a burlap head
On a body of straw
The albino crow bestows
A friendly hello
Through a half broken beak
To the sulking little girl
Who returns with a curtsy
As her doll waves
A how do you do
To the scarecrow’s delight
X.
Says the albino crow:
Lessons fall through the thoughts of dreams
Perplexing songs of dripping starlight
A nursery door, a vine twist key
A click of the lock, and a troubled mind
A rocking chair cradles baby and mother
Every step is a labor to strain
An innate desire to look at the other
When hand touches face she turns away
To reveal herself through echoing glass
A mother nursing a child of stone
In a chamber of dust and graying mass
Of empty eyes and skinless bones
This callous sentence of death’s reflection
In waking life is a shifting perception
XI.
The scarecrow’s bliss sinks to sorrow
As truth shatters into shards of
Seed, root, and stalk
Cross, crow, and girl
Sun, sky, and earthly
Fields of fair locks
Ignored and feral
Floating with sharp
Humming hymns
Sketched in a eerie
Chalky glow
Swallowed by the girl’s touch
Such that the skin
Took the likeness of
The world rendered in
A cyclic pursuit
To mimic the brush of
A solitary notion
Simple in meaning but too
Subtle to hold
XII.
A shift of scene rolls into
Grassy hills like
Green swells spotted
With wading trees
Rainbow flowers float to
Random patterns
Subject of the
Altering personas
Of a passing breeze
A single pilgrim
In the shape of a
Faceless specter
Paces a path shared
By the girl and her doll
Vowed to silence
The pilgrim signs
A symbol of peace
And prays the girl
To share her story
XIII.
Hills bring
Delicate cliffs like
Weathered ages
At the peak of a
Worldly wisdom
Guided by a hallow hand
Formed by robe but
Evanescent in skin
The little girl arrives
To a Victorian manor
On the rim of the earth
The ghostly pilgrim
Departs with blessing
Leaving girl, doll, and toy
Before an oak door
Guarded by passive pillars
A soft knock
A solid click and
A heavy creak
Bares a butler in a
Trim suit beneath a
Face and figure of
Polished bones
XIV.
The butler motions
A welcoming hand
To a festive ballroom
Dancing with the
Bleached bones of
Delicate diners decorated
In ritzy tuxedos and
Bulbous dresses that
Bloomed with ribbons
As if they were colored
To conceal their vacant hosts
Frighten by the undying smiles
Of lipless teeth and the
Clattering clapping of boney hands
The little girl recedes from the
Butler’s request and
Retreats to the green vitality
Of the Victorian lawn
The house door shuts
Before a hush of wind
Calmly pushing blades
Of grassy waves
To the edge of the earth
And never back again
XV.
Without a path
Left to stray
The little girl
Sadly accepts
The loss of her Dawn
And with her doll
Sits a small stolen toy
Beneath a single tree
Whose roots fall bare
In the cliff of the earth and
Whose leaves are shade
To another child
Playing a party for tea
With gold for hair and
The sun for a smile
She offers her name as
Eve
THE END
