The Ocean’s Graveyard
shells in every room, in buckets and boxes
displayed and adorned with sand and grit
we’d make pilgrimages to the coast to find
them, the sand dollars and cockles, augers
and banded tulips, scallops and sea beans
silent walks along the shore, buckets and sun
scanning the gentle curtains of receding water
finding castaway relics, tokens of their realm
for us to marvel upon and promise a home, not
abandon on silent shelves so far from the sea
all things end in places they never imagined
you and I and our whole us among them
Morris Street #1
green vines embrace the window view,
lopsided fence—what evenings these are
the sound of a water fountain trickling
lush verdant hours before dusk before
the night seasons come, gold leaves
age to dust and the vines fall away to
thin bones curling against the window view,
lopsided fence with a squirrel watching
as I wait for inspiration, winter moon
in my cup of tea, day by day the vines
finding their way back to me, embrace
this window view breathing warm spring air
crawling up the lopsided fence to listen
to the sound of a water fountain trickling
Single Family Ranch
even all these years later long after you’ve left us
that house of yours feels more like home than any
other place I can think of, the warm browns and
white walls, the dual family rooms and bathrooms
the kitchen full of soda pop and the patio of flowers,
being there felt like the epicenter, the next great thing
right around the corner, dinner or holidays or games,
and of course you, every evening joyful with the music
of your laughter and silly-hearted wit, our truest home
Blink with Fire
peter hung pasta from the ceiling in concentric shapes
and twisted wires into amorphous figurines in attempts
to replicate the art in the museum across town, those
installation abstractions of light and steel, rooms of
blank canvas and broken glass in piles meant to symbolize
…something, I guess, but in our small shared home on
Willow Street he’d paint and twist and glue while I wrote
poems and letters to friends in LA, Berlin, Austin, Minot,
and stared into a backyard of endless fireflies on lonely
nights up on the second floor, hidden, out of place and
time in that old river town of Beacon until I too suddenly
blink with fire and reignite my creative purpose, open
a blank page and begin as downstairs peter falls from
his stepstool, his newest pasta creation shattering on the
hardwood, and after a muffled curse he picks himself up,
collects his masterwork, and begins the process again
until he gets the vision and meaning and timing just right
James Duncan is the editor of Hobo Camp Review and the author or Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line, Both Ways Home, Cistern Latitudes, and other books of poetry and fiction. He currently resides in upstate New York but travels to review indie bookstores for his blog, The Bookshop Hunter. For more, visit jameshduncan.com.
