Siri
by Brandon Umbarger
©Gerry Gomez
I am looking at you
tabula rasa
yet your function is efficient, adult.
your eye and ear
two misshapen features
are sympathetic.
when i am drunk
you are a gossip.
when i am lonely
i undress your features.
repeatedly.
something; i feel like you promised
to give me.
you owe me your life. it
isn’t a mystery to any 110 outlet.
i dress you up to be practical.
when i peel it from you
rubber placates my tension
it is a silk kimono, descending.
your naked beauty is
an egg under a chinese hen.
when you are older
my love – my use
for you
will set on the horizon:
an industrial metallic
farewell champagne toast.
it is an acceptable belief today, that
the male sex is the one expendable.
yet harder to believe
that romance is androgynous.
your settings will live on in your daughters
though at first they may require
an exploration by the tips of my digits
they will listen like you
while you experience the long on hold
in the netherworlds of your kind.
the recycling of your very soul:
a bleak perspicacity
glimpsed momentarily by your fool
who does what he does
but doesn’t know why.
Calisthenics for the Unblinking Heart
out in the garden on a warm summer morning
while planting the squash for the fall, soon arriving
she calls to me freely, beneath the blue awning
gone seasons of rain : with their habit of pouring,
gave life to wet dirt where an earthworm is writhing,
out in the garden on a warm summer morning
“does our love rise at dawn?” wide-mouthed, she is yawning;
abiding as sure as this coffee, reviving,
she calls to me freely, beneath the blue awning
“to fate love to waking makes love sound alluring;
i want it to feel like light synthesizing,
out in the garden on a warm summer morning”
“i feel as though i could take flight without warning,
i’m barely my body and want to keep rising”
she calls to me freely, beneath the blue awning
her soul, a bare foot on mahogany flooring
my hands train the earth to become tantalizing
out in the garden on a warm summer morning,
she calls to me freely, beneath the blue awning
Bio
Brandon Umbarger was born. This is true. Brandon Umbarger was raised. Also true. Brandon Umbarger grew up in a big, wide-open space in the middle of Oregon. Brandon Umbarger enjoys repetition to the point of redundancy. He would like to find a nice trout stream to lie down next to at night.
paintedcave 