Three Poems by Gordon Marshall

Photo by Bill Perrault



Dizzy

In the engine room a wrist watch.
A wallet. A glass of water.
An encyclopedia of sadness.
Dust collects on the table.
Broken machine parts on the floor.
A dream of desertion. A dissolution.
The ship sinks in a sea of oil.



Airplane Glue

The life of the breeze is in the plastic.
It slows down the pace of the pesticides.
A diapason circles itself into the calendar
For the ninth. The days fall into a stupor.
Stars tailgate in the stadiums. Darkness
Encroaches. Shadows fall off the bone.
You have to sift through a lot of dirt.



Jazz

Refracted like a pomegranate through the heavens,
The black sun feels its way through the squids,
Tapeworks, braids, filigree, dissolving in a burst
of scissor kicks. A glass of ice water is spilled
On the smoldering ingots littering the grass,
Wraiths of smoke spilling through the sky.
A spirit invested with a nubile web of tropes
Weds itself to the void of echoes.
Sorrow bounces like radar through the fuse.