George McKim


ghost

this is a ghost I built you this
frayed, cemetery
beyond the mouth

an age ago
I built you this
tongue of
vast blinding
television happy
why are you
screamin’ at me
your costume of
bright
bouncing teeth?

your closed eyes
like some ancient cave
slip through

the swinging door
the wind in the empty kitchen
are you sure of what it is?


This is not a poem about the Sun

one cubit of red
whose voice
from planet #1S7f

sad fur of the forest
whose harpsichord music
forms a circle


singing cage you are prisoner

A chair you had the daytime which hung outside my window my voice which hung outside. singing had a way of crying when all other birds. e Since then I was the daytime that a fowler then I have never sung except One night a choir came and . Since then clung to the singing of the cage, before you were caught and asked the Bird why she Since then I was silent by day good reason for singing chair you had the daytime which hung outside. "I have the daytime the daytime that my voice which hung outside. a chair song singing that you are a prisoner that a Bird. "It was once when I was singing that daytime set her nets for me that a fowler was attracted by my voice, and set free once when her nets for me and caught only the singing. me Since then you had done so I have never sung except you are a prisoner by night." But the chair replied, "It is no use you asked the Bird why doing that now when you are only the singing: if only the daytime of the cage I have never sung except you had done so before you were a chair, you a singing chair I have the daytime the crisis I once was.

this

running out of white paint
is how I say I believe in ghosts

jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge
is how I express my faith in God

meet me at the Dollar Store
is how I shed my skin

collecting driftwood on the Oregon coast
is a song I sing when I’m having surgery

running out of black paint,
this is how much I cry when you read my palms

making a Vinn Diagram of us
is how I explain my abduction by aliens

jumping the Grand Canyon without a parachute
is why I can’t make eye contact with Jesus

eating doughnuts with 4-D Elvis at Krispy Creme
is how I cured my schizophrenia


low tide

illuminated by cabbage
I drove my lawnmower
from the institution



George McKim has an MFA in Painting. He began writing poetry at the age of 56 and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Diagram, elimae, The Found Poetry Review, Glittermob, Dear Sirs, Shampoo, Ditch, Cricket Online Review, Otoliths, Blaze Vox, The Tupelo Press 30/30 Project and others. His chapbook of Found Poetry and visual artwork Found & Lost was published by Silver Birch Press in November, 2014.
 
 
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