Three Poems by Elias Baez

FOGGY MORNING

shear sunlight’s

shaggy wool

tease out color clumps

gauzy prism pulling apart

damp the sharp

a little

today spit-slicked its index finger

& thumb

to thread eyelet sunrise

driving for milk

roadside crumple train track

roadkilled bird

crimson rosella

red chest

blue wings blue cheeks twitching

flat feathers

winds nudge

wake up

like a kid

begging

an always sleepy mother

strung up on branches

on electric fences

barbed wire

like prayer flags

like open mouths

the ordinarily invisible

spiderwebs show themselves

From Lorne

morning after fire

scraggly curlicues

under shed bark

trunk topologies

IRL creamy

O'Keeffe strokes

juvenile branches

throw up leaves

it's forty years since

Ash Wedsnesday made way

for the modern hillside

fivehead houses

balconies jut, perch

on knobby stilts

angular fish

n artisinal chips

dry brush burns past

the shutdown pier

the hotel vacancies

like smoky alveoli

droopy grasses poke thru

roadside netting where

your dad parks the Triton

i say "that's cloud shadows

on the water, right?"

your mom says "the waves'

as well," then "the ocean's

about the perfect color

of a fishscale, yeah?"

& that is right

DON'T BE AFRAID

note: nuts: essential to the success of this recipe

because of the cake's soft

center, u can't rely on the usual

test for doneness: insert a cake tester and have it come out clean

if u die, we both get paid

... !

u stare at me like a tasty frosted Bundt cake

like the arrow that Amazonian stuck in the peephole

of Voznesensky's happily wretched door

like the horrible Sandworm rearing and gnashing

at guiltless Timothée

who didn't ask to be born !

now u stare like i'm not

knockoff kugelhupf

poundcake featured in Good Housekeeping

batter beaten blended stirred spooned spread

baked felt cooled loosened

inverted

glaze displayed

u store me tightly covered

Elias Baez lives in Baltimore, where he earned his MFA from Johns Hopkins in 2020. His poems have appeared in No Contact, Mantis, and Rougarou, and his micro-chapbook Sweet 'n Low was published by Ghost City Press in 2021. In 2023, his chapbook Barback will be published by Bullshit Lit.