from AN ABSENCE OF SCIENTIFIC NOMENCLATURE
WE MAKE WATER
Out behind our bar,
the one we favor
like the way rats cling
to sinking ships
in hopes something different
than the near
and immediate future
is about to take place,
out behind the old beer wagon
the growth is beautiful.
The tangled gnarls of weeds
the curly fingers of shrubs
and grasses
grow wily rampant,
and I am sad to say
I know not a one
by their scientific name.
I just admire their tenacity
as I water their world,
the crazy desire to shoot up toward a sky,
forgetting the worry of the implausible distance,
until they get so high
they start to fold downward over;
a difference in direction
they are neither
aware of
or concerned with.
Back here,
we drunks
are proud of our piss magic.
FIRE NEVER LIES
i can’t
read music
or computer code
and my sense of manners
is ambiguous at best
but i know fire
seen it drink
and eat
carried it like a child
i sit back
with my woman
with my whelps
one,
the youngest of the brood,
asks me
how we came to be here
i tell him
with the force of good luck
at an appropriate time
though i see
the answer does not satisfy
and he will remain
forever in wonder
we sit back
and stare at the black blanket above
watch little specks dance
as the fire licks our hides
i can’t
read music
or computer code
and my sense of manners
is ambiguous at best
but i know fire
seen it drink
and eat
carried it like a child
i sit back
with my woman
with my whelps
one,
the youngest of the brood,
asks me
how we came to be here
i tell him
with the force of good luck
at an appropriate time
though i see
the answer does not satisfy
and he will remain
forever in wonder
we sit back
and stare at the black blanket above
watch little specks dance
as the fire licks our hides
TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE
if you ever thought for a second
that it was the chicken
before the egg
simply think of it
like this:
couldn’t it have been
the moon before
the earth,
the made before
the maker?
you can’t deny
what has always been obvious
―without first the tear
you can’t taste
the sweetness
of the salt
if you ever thought for a second
that it was the chicken
before the egg
simply think of it
like this:
couldn’t it have been
the moon before
the earth,
the made before
the maker?
you can’t deny
what has always been obvious
―without first the tear
you can’t taste
the sweetness
of the salt
BIO: Tyrel Kessinger lives, works and writes in Louisville, Kentucky. There’s the wife, two dogs, cat and all the other trappings of a fairly normal life. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in 3:AM Magazine, Red Fez, Grey Sparrow Journal, and Burning Word, among many others. In early 2011, he won the Literary LEO Magazine award for fiction. Recently, he’s found a home as a Contributing Editor for Black Heart Magazine and Naissance Chapbooks has published his chapbook “when the river is hungry, the river eats.”
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