SELECTED POETRY

by
Craig Kirchner

LIBRARY BEFORE DAWN

It is still, all asleep, Cabernet
relaxes against the glass.
The books facing me
remind me of the girls,
dresses all different colors,
lined up across the hall at
CYO dances, facing the boys,
standing straight, short and tall,
giving a certain flavor
and aroma to the room,
while waiting to be chosen.

Full of words, but too shy
to speak aggressively -
always the whispering though
as now the shelves
begin to faintly vibrate.
Dorothy Parker quietly denigrating
Pound about his politics,
Pastan to Dickinson about the
economy of her pain and
Plath very low to Sexton
on the craft of death.

I vaguely make out Eliot
criticizing my choice of wine
when Whitman hushes them all
and wants to get back to the
slow-dancing of teenage boys,
first gropes to �Wonderland by Night� -
comparing it to my handling
of their volumes and my occasionally
taking them individually to the car
apparently for closer inspection.

� Craig Kirchner

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FUN LEGS

Vaguely, like in somebody else�s dream,
one of those strange cell-phone settings ringing.
No it�s the doorbell. Forgot we had one.
I slip on my Hyatt Regency robe.

It�s almost happy hour luv
and you�re still in the sack,
you are so decadent.

Molly was a cuddler,
Winona Ryder eyes,
always with cashmere soft knit tops
that smelled like clean bed sheets

and fun legs in short skirts.
Fun legs was not mine,
my roommate Bernie coined it,
but it was perfect.

She was hot,
squirming on my lap,
telling me about her new guy

He doesn�t smoke or drink
and said he wouldn�t know how

to lie to me.
Something, huh?

She moved that twenty-something ass

just enough to add a whole new freedom
to the afternoon.

It�s like he can read my mind.
He�s deep and a little aloof,
not like you at all

Moving just often enough,
fun legs keep coming to mind.
I ask her if he has pointy ears and

says goodnight with a split finger raised palm,

thinking for sure there must be
a Vulcan in the hen house
and knowing that an alien-like perversion
was quickly growing here at home.

� Craig Kirchner

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BARTER

You need more space.
You are adamant.

Sitting at the kitchen table
at 4 AM, moments
of pause and stare,
which were never an issue,
now hang like August air
over your 3 cubic feet.

The square footage
of your surface,
a tougher estimate -
worth the trouble -
is Brazilian waxed, moves
on legs all men follow,
and you know it.
You know your space

Our space jointly,
intensely, decreases
the more of me
is inside of you.
Total �O� � your phrase,
takes on the new
curious calibration
of less space.

In silent calculations,
fiddling with
the wine cork,
you teasing the cork screw,
appendages slightly askew -
I am adamant �

I�ll trade more for less.
I need less space.

� Craig Kirchner

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SWAGGER

He walked
God-directed in hell,
through valleys of vain,
returning with a cache
of meaningless words
laid end on end
ad infinitum,
cauterized moments
between leathered
armfuls
of nothing.

A cloudless sky
of never-ending blue,
greyed, turned east
then black.
Night gave blind reason
to hugs of default,
hardened, swarthy,
despairing hands
grasping naked
their own shoulders.

� Craig Kirchner

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INTERVIEW IN A BAR

To extend life
is to multiply death,

he postured his Guinness
in front of his lips,
but did not sip.

You don�t sleep do you,
it goes unnoticed though
like your contempt for food

and conversation?
You sit here sober
but see a different room,
only you hear the rats,
their disease infecting
shadows, scattering scared
through the walls.

In your nips of dream
you�re catatonic
in silent coma,
skin grey like the fog,
serpents eat monkeys as
you walk uneven stairs
to a granite landing,
the moon is the
color of lava,
the sun in your belly
burns your eyes,
reddens the night,
jeopardizes the stars.

� Craig Kirchner

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POEMS

As often as not
it floats in,
dehydrated, half-conscious

a Crusoe made raft,
on Karmic seas
of wandering green waves,
prozac-nurtured tides

in search of some
life supporting port.

Occasionally a rocket,
a hot-orange concussion

a shot from an
empty chamber
that fires anyway
if teased
and stroked

to targets that are
never destinations.

Eventually it comes
to words

forms, shapes, carriers
full on the fingertips,
songs from tracked
purple veins,
music of the spheres

tea leaves read
in fingerprints of wonder.

� Craig Kirchner

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