Keith Higginbotham


When Home Won’t Let You Stay

There are so many blue
screens of death 

So many boxes of understatements

Felt, flour, broken glass
ball bearings and meat
cleavers

Foam pellets we use for ballast

Swaths of latex or vinyl
and related atrocities 
make it all look conceptual 

Humans dance, float, and dive
through shattered spaces
with a “can-do” attitude

Meditating on belonging and its opposite



Pukefish

amen league:
here is your flower future

let on asthma where your 
buds are arching

the reflux tapestries 
ankle the churn

i’m talking sky headshakes
the aching coiled marquees

translucent furniture
the hammer machine 

asphalt plants the
fuzzy sunshine

bragging porch sugar
a rotting urchin lunch



Spaulding

it doesn’t get better than
sleep worm monologue 

fur children who vowel 
the camelback sham

hysteria and protein 
in scissors deep

times shylock telephone
jones like a german machine

like brass gas like kong
clearing the earth

barbarous where the antlers are
the brides of language
 
sheepless modern
sleeping ambush

the theater stone the young sleuth
he of the stone an altered 

hotel with the genius cure 
he of type & traffic



Oriole

wood cereal 
               the machine loop tree
desert of dollar 
               a fellow farm

christ pines in the 
               head
mice a chance 
               of country cheesy

my oriole hand 
               phantom of the
voice of the planet 
               American 

biz in tryouts 
               of the forest and the tape 
flea of corn brain my 
               clone on seventh

ankle of the trout 
               light of the heartland
on into the yes 
               is yes yes or no

the tailored stomach 
               prairie the face
bright as a chin bright 
               like sea sleep



Against Elongation

1.

Compass fleas a hyacinth
Frenetic emblem
Wasp toe
Melted river adapted a feast

2.

Time stones yank my tube
The un-insides
Melt houses
On the vulgar toast

3.

A twirling lung
Fists the last swoons
Temple pimple strap
Remedy in spools

Keith Higginbotham has published the poetry collections Calibration (Argotist eBooks), Theme From Next Date (Ten Pages Press), Prosaic Suburban Commercial (Eratio Editions), and Carrying the Air on a Stick (The Runaway Spoon Press). He also makes art, which has appeared in various publications and on book covers, and most recently in The Melon Factory Magazine. You can find his artwork on Instagram (@jkeith2f) and all sorts of other stuff on his Twitter account (@ohaikeith). He lives in South Carolina, USA.

 
 

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