James Cervantes

Pairings/Pre-apocalyptic



A mockingbird subtracts a song from the repertoire
while the press corps listens to the Secretary of Defense.

*

Koi grow fat in a pond with a pump and a feeding hand.
Countless neighbors strain the moat around the mall.

*

The commemorative beauty of tragic wreckage,the rosy-fingered dawn.
Nonetheless, the Beer Festival takes place the third Wednesday of March.

*

The plot is boyhood, stream, wildflowers, death in a couplet.
The poet has tea and ginger cookies, little bites on the tongue.

*

Our intrepid duo drinks the milk of dream-fed cows,
that which is between them, barely there when they first meet.

*

An idea is already a reality, likewise a basket of commodities.
American ruins are discovered in the cloud of consciousness.

*

but but but goes the little motorboat on the Sea of Exception.
Eggs are affected the day the sink whispers snake pits of Winnipeg.

*

There is a problem with a still body of water.
The poem before it becomes language.

*

The Michaels install sound, wingless, saintless.
Sex, death, the little and the boundless.

*

A war will unfold over a broken vessel, chaos spill out
as a colorless liquid, and within it, cells without intent.

*

The heat is white. The heat is yellow. The heat is red
and is called hateful though the star does not mean it to be.

*

The children we were allow the star named Sun
to be known simply for its cold light.