Kevin Opstedal


Something Else Again

A genetic predispopsition was Achilles
before Frankenstein had been invented
& scary but scary like big white people from Ohio
filling the parking lot
where the mercenary prophet distills the sky
& I find myself skating past another
day I’m not supposed to make it through

A part of the shifting winds you & I know
ping the eyes of moonlight

Music fills in the gaps
as if anything could
which ate Los Angeles

I said I felt the room filling with glass

I left my shoes in my other suit

She had eyes like a blue dog walking
but her heart was nearly as black as mine

There was very little that needed to be said

It was a hostile takeover



Not Unlike a 19th Century Tattoo

I like that telephone
pole silhouetted against the
blood-orange sky

It’s reminiscent of the
crucifix
& seems to hold dark suggestions of
spiritual transmission
& lost phone calls

               in road-to-Damascus-revelation terms

                                                                     via the PCH

What’s done to a fizzle skids past the
rainpuddles & mudslides
to assert a lame-ass sense of
what’s lyrical
on a one-string ukulele banjo

I heard “whores” when
what was really said was
“horse”

                             ( Book of Revelations, 6:8 )

It might have been an appaloosa
& a trail of wreckage

The straight-edge & the automatic

                                      (pearl-handled)

It’s all in the flow
by which I mean the
fluency
& the numbers
of what could be said

                                                            REVELATION

                                                            The light of day was on her

                                                            It was night



Calculated Risk

She knew dark corridors where
she could listen to her pulse beat against the walls
could feel
                              her eyes
                                                            amidst clouds
          as if she could cast her shadow over the waves
lifted
                              is soft
          partially disclosed
but death’s tunnel thru a sea shell
                                             obscure realm of tilted altars
          beneath the tidal tremors
                                                            an inconsistent harmony
extends
                              like a wind that teases a song out of glass birds
& out on the horizon there was nothing
only the moon
                                      breaking
                                                             across the water
to enter the wave of it
                                             or to deliver light
whose fingers initiate the furtive breath
                                                            in shallow ocean pools
          the color of tarnished mirrors



Kevin Opstedal has a new "last ditch Hail Mary anorexic book of selected poems" out, titled RARE SURF, VOL. 2 : NEW & USED POEMS. Along with poet Michael Price he edits Blue Book magazine & publishes Blue Press Books. His last known residence was in Santa Cruz, California.



 
 
 
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