Keith Higginbotham


Linus Pepsi Headlines

festooned woven axle  
forgotten hair like pollution of machines

unitary coax water holding
its equilateral twin

memory glue dioxide hence emergency
tornado snowdrifts

beauty rhymes with the turbulent howling
of winking agnostic buttonholed moons

memories detuned
eye-botched astral loom

bottomless gasoline mapping 
the barcode’s wing



Dueling Out, Opening Inward, Cars Whirring

resurrect the water appearing 
to the blind
sword ferns hinge in

the rising alleys of the hallelujah 
sequins
stripped of lightbulb
of mother tin-types

rooftops for pennant
grass on vaults the aftermath heads 
under
theme of smoke 
spinning the Berlin light

or the shadeless plates 
the forgiven sky that fireworks across you



When Raphael Gomes Moved to America

A friend of mine said he saw Raphael Gomes 
in a bar in London. I didn’t know who Raphael 
Gomes was, so I asked him and he told me 
that Raphael Gomes was a big YouTube star. We 
looked him up. 

My friend then said that he might not have 
actually been in London when he might 
or might not have gone to a bar where he 
might or might not have seen Raphael 
Gomes. It really didn’t matter to me. I started 
watching his videos with abandon. Raphael 
Gomes seemed pretty happy making videos, and 
this depressed me because I’ve never been 
happy doing anything.

Raphael Gomes was so happy that he 
decided to move from London to the United 
States, which he had previously visited and said 
he’d like to live someday. It takes a lot 
of guts to make a move like that, and also 
a lot of money. Raphael Gomes has a lot 
of money. I started having feelings.

Raphael Gomes makes a lot of money 
making videos, and this depresses me. I would like 
to make videos like Raphael Gomes and I would 
like to have lots of money so I could pick up and 
move somewhere that would make me happy. I have 
no idea where that would be, but I’m sure 
that once I got there it would be 
a disappointment, just like everything else.

When Raphael Gomes moved to America he paid 
fifty thousand dollars to take a private jet across
the Atlantic just so he could be with his dog, who 
sat in the seat with him instead of being kept 
in the cargo hold. And when Raphael Gomes 
moved to America I also wanted to move 
to America, although I was already here.



A real chimp for the earth

The ice trick of Bogota 
barely figs us open.
Beating further,
the blank anti-shadow 
ancient
and dark with
grass.



Vibes of the Iroquois

Spirit army man
System of the splendor pits

Potomac painting the Neptune gang
Cannonballs fort headdress

Of undressed crashing miracles
On floated thighs

Bosch’s box choppers seagull marks 
Warble future tonight has plotted all

Keith Higginbotham’s latest poetry book is Chainsaw Gender Reveal (LJMcD Comms., 2023). He is also the author of Calibration (Argotist eBooks), Theme From Next Date (Ten Pages Press), Prosaic Suburban Commercial (E∙ratio Editions), and Carrying the Air on a Stick (The Runaway Spoon Press). You can find his artwork on Instagram (@jkeith2f) and all sorts of other stuff on his Twitter account (@ohaikeith). He lives in South Carolina.

 
 

previous page     contents     next page