Photosynthesis
Nolan Chessman
you ask me to pose
a scenario
a city
where no rooms
are glowing
one
in which we don’t
wake up
small
fires ripping shyly through
our branches
this is one
of those faces you make
I will regret
and yet
try to imagine some
simpler pain
the house leans in
toward the light
listening
for the sharp hiss
and splinter
darkest rooms
between rooms
fill the eyes with smoke
and in the morning rice
paddies nodding out
brackish rile
of birds at the edges
ascend
descend
unknowingly inert
in their fitful performances
Pallesthesia
Nolan Chessman
Kaleidoscopic
tents whap high
over blue dunes
Like birds
the very sight
insults you
A swift
flapping in
the bones
We wade in
Panicgrass
yellows your knees
Mule-withered
shoulders thatched
with snow
No wolves now
Campfires
forlorn on their
yawnless horizons
A clatter of black
turtles floods the trail
Spontaneous
forms of life
you say
Oxidize
and corrode
Smoke
The throat
palpitates
at the thought of
How these things end
Treeline
Bladebone
Yessir
Nolan Chessman is a graduate of the poetry programs at Columbia College Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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