Two Poems

By Eric Dunham

Biopsy of a Snowy Evening

I looked inside the mirror in my cold house on a snowy day—

It was the tempest that leaves electricity starved walls with their innards black,

The first dark night in a string of what ifs—

I saw cliches hung about my face, cranes hanging in sun flecks,

And within the auburn tattoos of my evening,

I noticed a glint like sleeping snowflakes pooling on my skin.

In this canvas of me there were fingernail moons waxing under tired eyes

And a nectarine sky circling my lips, filled to the brim— a barn owl camouflaged

In silk stained branches, eager for the catch swoops across me.

It is my corporal exhale.

Tonight’s thick sunset had freckles of gold nestled in its dimples—

The sequoia’s leaves shivered like hostages until they fell to a new deathbed,

And miles of snow stretched across Westover, purpling like old bruises

As dusk plundered forward, staining the earth like inky fingers in blueberry fields.

The bathroom shadows climbed up the walls like handprints,

And I draped them over myself. In the breaths between each second

I looked up and saw the darkness cuddling me, sunset caked into a gentle smile—

In that mirror I stood as still as a winter's evening,

Then headed onwards with a northwest bound heart.

Triptych of Multicolour Madrid

i.

Through the plane window, the smoked Spanish earth snaked around the countryside

And drew up little mahogany whirlpools of mud on the ground.

Little brushes of green popped up from the cracked scarlet surface like ideas—

Or buds in springtime.

Its houses were lined in neat order by the quarries, with white roofs like lounging giants.

Connected by ashen lines scar streets, its routes are to be undertaken in the morning,

These pockets of civilization strung together like beads on a child’s bracelet.

A truck traces the autopista like a soft finger over skin,

And it is merely a white hyphen elongating until the silence has a lisp.

The hills bulge up, yearning to fill the empty sky—

The capital awaits us.

ii.

On the streets of Madrid, a gold light creeps into the long morning shadows,

Daybreak pulling on the edges of night, storefronts covered by metal, the day caged in—

But this sun blushes a twinge of sunset pink, makes one final push,

The city stretching out its arms, curling its fingers—

And brings a pollinated lightness to the early bustle.

A cloud of poplar seeds tumbles over the Manzanares

Like a dream in the process of being forgotten,

And sips in the reflection of the budding day on the river—

I swear I could have seen a technicolour rainbow

Flash for a moment in the ebbing current.

iii.

A thousand and more souls scattered throughout El Retiro—

Paddlers bobbing in gum drop rowboats popping up like freckles in the lake,

Sunbathers baring themselves under checkered patterns of elm shade,

A silky sky with a couple cirrus tears towards the top.

The swallows swooping from trees, golden cherry blossoms blowing kisses,

Faraway bells ring, wander and rest like vagabonds in the late afternoon air.

The fountain spindles upwards searching,

Knuckles caressing the clouds before falling back down—

And the poet alchemises the air around him into beauty with just a typewriter.

The evening sun drip into the earth’s,

And that orange heart expands into the walls this crouching crystal palace—

A scarlet brush grazes the tips of the the royal pillars and touches the horizon,

And the shadows cast dance like revellers in the grass.

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