ISSUE THREE: December, 2019

TERRAIN

by DAN RAPHAEL

Some people travel valleys, though the streams that bottom them
are difficult to walk along—thick plant growth, surprising water, 
gravity’s chunky contributions. 
i go for the ridges, sometimes both ridges at once, 
like drinking malt liquor and aged microbrews.
my breakfasts are often the same and blandish—
granola & yogurt,  pb&j or macaroni w/ butter—
but for lunch i can go umami crazy, kim chi mackerel hot pot or
bun bo hue with tripe, quail eggs, pigs knuckles and congealed blood. 

It’s bolder to seize the middle than staying in your lane 
though every where’s safer when folks are going the same way
a construction zone can pop up overnight and change your travel route and timing. 
did you ever turn over in bed early morning and find someone unexpected there, 
go to the bathroom and see that the upstairs neighbor had let her bathtub overflow 
so now you’re sharing? 

Driving down the street a crow came swooping  right in front of me aimed 
for the mooshed carcass in my lane, collided with the front of my car 
and bounced back to the curb it came from, at best a smashed wing.
i was on my way to the dentist but no Novocain for the crow. 
Didn’t see any corvid witnesses—they remember and are everywhere

As my feet remember dancing on rocks, as my arms know we could fly once, 
as every valley was once narrow, rocks never forget, streams know 
they’ll eventually get to the sea even if they have to evaporate first, 
incremental rebirths as snow, drainage ditches, aquifers, a glass of water 
that sat--half full, rich with information--untouched for decades. 
islands within lagoons within islands within a crater 
that’s now almost an entire country that was part of a larger country
that had earlier been dozens of villages with their own tongues 

Walk the rooftops, swim the sewers, hover above the tallest tree 
and taste the world going by, almost immune to the sun’s asymmetric news, 
history melting with nowhere to flow, this moment a fine silk sheet 
being run through the streets of smoke, thorns and saber flies

Manything, DAN RAPHAEL's 21st book, was published in September by Unlikely Books. Newer poems appear in Caliban, Otoliths, Great Weather for Media, Red Fez and Projected Letters. Most Wednesdays Dan writes and records a current events poem for The KBOO Evening News.