CHAD REYNOLDS
 

AUTO-COLLABORATIONS WITH MYSELF

I.

I do not need anyone

to die for my verse.

It is not contingent

upon mendicant.

Holding my own yarn

and knitting at parties,

I would never leave

stray strings for someone

to pull. Why would I want

to start unraveling?

I’ve spent a lifetime raveling.

 

II.

How much there is to have

to say about myself!

I need myself to say it.

I start a line, I finish

the line, I start a line.

 

III.

Call these lines the skull

I graffiti on my face

to remind me there is

a face on this skull.

Most of the time I forget.

I only remember

when I look in the mirror.

 

AUTO-COLLABORATIONS WITH MYSELF

I.

My friend writes short little poems with Zach,

she writes bottle-sized poems with Sarah.

Another friend collaborates with Kathy.

Another also with Sarah. Sarah—what a slut!

 

II.

I want more than nudity in my poetry

I want penetration.

III.

The muse for my poems is that slut Sarah I mentioned earlier.

The one who collaborates with the one who collaborates with everyone but me.

Sing, Sarah, of your generosity.

IV.

When I sang to Sarah just now,

I was the only one singing.

 

V.

If I can’t have sex in my epic, I will settle for mutual masturbation.

 

 

 

COAST__________

Mark where I meet my maker:

a riverboat frothing at its rear

to paddle me to the other side,

its smokestack looking counterfeit—

miles away anyone can see

nothing but air comes out of it;

up close, anyone can see that air

only greets deep nothingness.

Still, people pay for this shit.

What they don’t get is that inside the boat

a coastguard cutter waits to flex

its antiquarian sails.                                                                                        

                            Black sails!

I can hear the canvas, I can smell

the mast. At the axis of their intersection,

a small curl of rope ties me up.

We are giving all the wrong signs.

 

I’ve been yelling, land ho!

for so long now, no one believes me,

not even the birds migrated

from their shores to follow us to sea.

Their cries accuse. When we run

aground, they’ll peck me overboard.

 

 

SHORE__________

 

This buffer zone against the onslaught

of waves would wash us out of house

and home, lift us up and take us out

to sea where salt water tears itself

a thousand times to break against us,

to smooth our skin like a glass bottle

flipped from a boat and splashed on the sand

in translucent, polished gems.

 

I venture onto this threshold to comb

the beach with the metal detector

my grandmother gave me one birthday.

She said to use it to summon what's been cast

toward me. It's useful when

I have nothing but stupid hope filming

my eyes, on mornings when I stare

through holes of keys I've found.

 

High tide is the perfect time

for recycled mythologies to begin.

I mold my flotsam into a vessel

to carry this message to the future:

I sing of arms and a man. I am not

the first to come from these shores.