Amtrak

Work Ethic and I
are at a crowded Penn Station,
standing in front of the Big Board,
waiting for our track to flash.

A few move up - Boston, Trenton -
but the crowd doesn’t move.
They are all waiting for our train,
and it’s late.

W.E. kills the time
by pretending he’s an alien
taking reconnaissance notes.

They are upright with pink epidermis,
one head, and two legs.
Left appendages pull fairly large black,
box-like tails on wheels
and the right pushes small black boxes
to the side of the head.
Only a very few have had these tails removed,
and almost all talk to themselves.

Finally – Washington: track 15 –
and the bustle starts to the escalator.
We rush a bit to stand and wait,
but now we are focused,
we all know where we’re going.
I lose W.E. in the crowd and think
about his surveillant scribble.

All seem motivated by some God-like force
to flee at the same time,
but move poorly as a unit,
like a funnel full of roaches.

I’m not worried, he gets lost quite often,
but always resurfaces.
He’s fun to hang with and doesn’t drink much.
He travels light and takes good notes.

3 AM

In the pitch black of the room,
a light snore in a large bed,
and it wasn’t even skin on skin.

It was the nail,
of the index finger
of my left hand,
grasping the pillow to my chest,
barely touching your arm.
I thought perhaps it was your pillow,
but then you moved ever so slightly.

In my insomniac musings
it was as grand a moment,
as if your legs had been wrapped around me,
or my finger had been caressing your lips.

Morning encounters

The metaphor of mirror
on the medicine cabinet door.
Twins, he of the new language,
me twisting and shaving the other,
grounded barefoot on the cool white tile,
the one that grew the 3-day stubble.

It’s cold out there, he says,
redefining with the black comb the part,
now sitting on the right.
I tilt his screen 90 degrees,
to face the wind and sleet
beating against the bathroom window.

He, no longer there to see,
is faced with the appropriately,
frigid answer to his interrogation:
replaced also, as it were,
with the prescriptions, remedies,
ointments and mouthwash.

Neatly arranged new metaphors,
categorized carefully on 3 shelves,
quietly not caring about
the view or the weather,
the vanities of me in the third person,
and one-dimensional musings.

IMAX

Guarding against the of-late
tendency to forget completely,
I sketched the past to scale
on blue-checked graph paper,
putting into an overview perspective
the best and worst iconic moments,
all tops of heads, shoulders and cleavage,
accurate miniature snapshots,
not influenced by expression or words,
no innuendo or facial tics,
just impartial history detailed from above,
creating a rolodex dimension
for the bijou reality of the back
of the mind, index-tabbed by category,
providing easy reference for the
rem-sleep dreamer who provides the 3D quality,
plugs back in the bedroom brown eyes,
do-me cheek bones, tongue-licked lips,
that ‘talk dirty to me’ voice,
that sucks inhibition from the room,
in the third of our existences,
the sepia-toned stream of consciousness,
the cognac-noir matinees
where we’re always our nastiest,
most run-on, most relaxed.

 Craig Kirchner is retired and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems in a folder on a laptop. These words tend to keep him straight.

After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Poetry Quarterly, Decadent Review, New World Writing, Neologism, The Light Ekphrastic, Unlikely Stories, Wild Violet, Last Stanza, Unbroken, The Globe Review, Skinny, Your Impossible Voice, Fairfield Scribes, Spillwords, WitCraft, Bombfire, Ink in Thirds, Ginosko, Last Leaves, Literary Heist, The Blotter Magazine, Quail Bell , Variety Pack Ariel Chart, Lit Shark, Gas, Teach-Write, Cape Magazine, Scars, Yellow Mama, Rundelania, Flora Fiction, Young Ravens, Loud Coffee Press, Edge of Humanity, Carolina Muse, and the Journal of Expressive Writing and has work forthcoming in Valiant Scribe, Chiron Review, Sybil, Timalda’s Diary, Vine Leaf Press, Wise Owl, Moria, The Argyle, Same Faces, Floyd County Moonshine, Coneflower Café, Impspired, Borderless Crossings, Hamilton Stone Review, Kleksograph. Dark Winter, Medusa’s Kitchen, Literary Yard, and The Main Street Rag.