Poetry: Chessman

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.