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.