by Tony Brinkley
Else
God of the back room, God of the waiting
God of the window and God of the door,
God of the outside as one pane of light,
God of the breath between focus and flight.
God of the moment before diagnosis,
God of the steady, evolving prognosis.
God of the blue hue that makes me believe
in the difference between bitter water and sweet.
God of the lilacs that spread to the sky whose sight smells
of sea salt spirit.
God of the curtains, prisms, screens,
God of the lipids ‘tween muscular sheens
God of the glaze between closeness and distance,
God of the gate from which fancy takes flight.
God of the absence that gives up its presence,
God of the distance that makes us all one.
God of the moment
you didn’t notice
God of the places I don’t know but could.
Two fruits hung in the garden that day;
I can’t speak to evil but good was the pear.
Could there be better than that grainy softness,
A pillow for every tastebud and hair?
Each naked nerve huddled tight against muscle
Breathes easy now, buried in opulent pelts.
“She’s not here,” you whisper, but that’s where you’re wrong:
I am somewhere else.
TJ Duke writes, lives, and wanders in the foothills of the Rockies. She loves working with kids, especially the disabled and neurodivergent kids that might otherwise be called “little stinkers.” Her previous work includes poetry, novels, and a bleeding mess of an MDiv thesis for Vanderbilt University, but she is honored to call Feral her first publication. As long as she lives, TJ will make art from the perspective of someone who, for a very long time, could not dream of anything but waking up.
Tony Brinkley’s poetry, art and translations have appeared recently in Collateral, Trafika Europe, Ana, Nashville Review, Exchanges, Neologism, Poems In Translation, Bombay Review, Pictura Journal, Blue Unicorn, Merion West, Reverie, Viridine Library, Rumen, Soul, Last Leaves Review, Lover’s Eye Press, Miserere Review, Consequence Forum, Jerry Jazz Musician and Antifa Literary Review. Before retirement, Brinkley taught literature at the University of Maine. He is the editor (with Keith Hanley) of Romantic Revisions. He is the author of Stalin’s Eyes and Gomorrah. A chapbook – America, America – and a book of images – Icons of War – will be forthcoming in the next few months