Poems by Eric Dunham

by Eric Dunham

A Book of Exodus

The shower trickled through my head like it was bleeding

Down the crevices of an altar and left clumps of my hair on

The bathroom tile as if each follicle were a reed swept away

By a gale bowling through the Suez— filament strands tightened together,

Resembling the bristled hands of families interlocking on their way

Out from homelands that have splintered like glass.

My fingers run through the ghosts of curls, my hand a guiding shepherd

Schlepping his miracles forward, as the herd twists and coils

To reclaim its survival for the journey ahead. 

This sea, pooling around my body, evaporates and rises to the ceiling 

Like a song which has been sung enough to become a prayer—

There, villages of mildew pop up like clouds, there are schools of fish 

Crossing the sky, paddling along with steam rising from each scale.

Gold of the evening sun sneaks through the window and envelopes the bathroom,

Travelling up each tile and painting an oblong diptych 

across the skeleton of this personal synagogue— 

Its curtain rods are my own arms reaching up, extended like a scepter,

or like the long legs of insects crawling out from the cracks in the wall—

Fishbowl wrapped in tissue paper, lonely crown with a holy weight gone.

Atlantic Dreams

The airport speaks a universal language—

Like the rest of the night, this plane hangs from 

Strings tied to the fingers of far gone puppeteers,

And from the window seat I looked down at Virginia like

Its highways were cut open by sleek, broken promises. 

I noticed the moon at my eye’s level—

He was taunting me, baring his chest broad

With clotted scars and a material chalk grin plastered on his face, 

All but daring me to spill the sanctified secret I had made with Mars.

His craters were a myriad of mouthpieces buzzing 

All open ajar as if to breathe out irresistible whispers. 

The turbulence rocks me like a heavy cradle over Long Island, 

So maybe I will love you. 

Each tap that my finger imprinted onto plastic film made its own craters—

The letters were pressed in like the type of anticipation that leaves a mark,

That of crescent shadows cast under rose dimples or blueberry bushes ensnared from the iris.

Inches away the wind trilled a throaty whistle and I could almost feel 

The sweet juices of a summer’s night licking up cobblestones in a ballet dancing drizzle.

This plane is an oasis or just a roaring footstep or maybe it is 

A mythology being written with chemtrails in cursive lettering,

Where lust folds in on itself, and cities trickle from the spout,

Until there is nothing left but the taut line on my hand waiting to be read.

I’ll bide my time because the moon, he would have done the same.

ST.ART does not own the rights to any images used in this article.