Goosefleshing

A sinkful of dishes or a turned back in bed

feeds the system of quick and quiet

prickings.

A root swells.

A slab of sidewalk nicks a toe. Then

a slack handshake

a chatty sister

a pyre lighting the lake

and the sudden rupture is inexplicable. But

stop. Feel it. The urge

to kill a man

is a rat in a paper cage.

The urge to kill a man

is a fresh broom in the forest.

*

Very Large Array

I called in suspicion. Walking home – a fogged

streetcar, fireworks to the east, the stars’

sweaty nest. The flutter in your voice

was a stranger’s smile on the stairs.

I called in anger. Rain and traffic, a basket of

rotten bananas, a splinter.

The crack in your voice was a match-head,

my tongue a trail of gasoline.

I called in desperation. Skin-shiver, achy

Creole music, oceans clutching their aqua shawls.

The tick

in your voice…

there is a place in New Mexico:

Very Large Array - telescopes

scrambling cosmic chatter. Rattle-boxes

filled with snow. Radio waves swim out

like snorklers scanning wraiths

of wet-electric. Each scope-face

wheeling the cyclopean ear,

thirteen miles long. It hears:

a lunar apogee

Plutonian lampposts

a supernova

made human.

**

Timothy O'Keefe has worked as a short order cook, museum archivist, shoe salesman, environmental consultant, and mover.  His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Mid-American Review, 32 Poems, and Good Foot.  He was awarded a scholarship to attend the 2003 Catskill Poetry Workshop.  Currently, he is enrolled in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University on an MFA teaching fellowship.

Archived at http://lit.konundrum.com/poetry/okeefet_poems.htm