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Jim Carballo Mar 2013
i just want to live in a small little cottage
in alaska
studying giant squid and sharks
with three dogs.
a husky, a samoyed and a great pyreneese.
and a beautiful little girl, named valerie.
valerie is my dream, she's one of the reasons i'm excited to have kids.
she's going to be great, i can just tell.
i already love her.
but i don't want her to grow up to resent me
all kids end up hating their parents
and moving to some obscure place
like alaska.
please, valerie. don't hate me.
i will love you unconditionally.
no one's going to hurt my baby girl
please, baby, i promise you
you can tell me whatever.
i won't judge you.
you can be queer, trans, whatever.
i'll call you vladimir if you want.
anything, you can be anything.
i'll love you forever.
please
valerie
please come soon.
A plume should be a thing lovely and light
dancing violet as it's fanned
at the flanks of the blue
bird-of-paradise
who hangs limberly
to solicit a mate

It should curl
blinding white at the back
of the puffy Samoyed
prancing fancy to please a master
who also preens on the oval
of a sawdust track

It should flop
red at the top of gold-painted tin
helmet awry on the head
of an aspiring actor
who plays centurion for tips
outside a mobbed Colosseum

It should spray
as clear and cooling drops out
the copper mouth of a grass-snake
green hose uncoiled by
the sneaky dad who tickles
giggles from sweaty kids

It should flutter
gray at the tail end of a quill
bouncing to the frenzied
jottings of an anachronistic
frump who takes the pain to outfit
himself far too seriously

A plume should not be a thing of plague
riding currents kissed by taint-
sweet crude blasted from a wound
gouged in the crust
of a frigid deep to feed
our shallow lust for eases

It shouldn't choke

It shouldn't muck

It shouldn't tar

It can't help
poisoning that last pretense
we cared about anything,
be it plumed or not, but
the finality of
a bottom line
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
newborn Jan 2022
i used to come home and cry and shake and hang my head like i had fainted
i used to see open fields and say
“it’s just grass.”
but you know i don’t mean that
cause i am moist from the rainfall
that you cleansed my ash heart with
and now the snow looks like a playful
samoyed dog
running with a purpose stronger
than a passion
leaping and bounding
i touch the heavy air with the palm of my sweaty hands
i dig up your voice from an egyptian tomb
dance in the azure illumination
becoming any creature or being i wanna be
shapeshifting into someone
more pleasurable
amounting to everything since you touched me
you are more than someone who gave me life again after these painful and obedient years
you are an angel in the shadows
in the bloodthirsty hunger of the night
stretching your hand to reach a small body who can’t seem to stop suffering
and even as i direct these poems to you
you can’t even listen in
unless you stumble upon some girl who tries to dream in a world where that is less
likely to
come true
than a physic prophecy
making the pages bleed with my admiration
of the way you cross your fingers
and comfort me during danger
i am lost but around you i am found
and i am starting to think it’s not a coincidence now
oh my gosh

1/24/22

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