Patrick Cahill
after the collision of objects mistaken for birds, trees dripping orange, do you think this maybe a small thing, Miles in the middle register, muted, a wedding beside the waves, the long of it and the short of it, instructions along the kelp line, anxiety slipping into its coordinates, shadows stain the slope, his tilt into it a perfect angle, the plant pulled downward into the earth empties the air, the chambers of the chambers of—smell me, you said, again that faint promise of a smile, smell me—
Patrick Cahill’sThe Machinery of Sleep (Sixteen Rivers Press) came out in 2020. His prose and poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. A cofounder and editor of Ambush Review, he was also a contributing editor for the Sonoma County anthology Digging Our Poetic Roots. He received his Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz and wrote a study of Whitman and visual experience in nineteenth-century America. Portions of this work have appeared in The Daguerreian Annual and Left Curve. Patrick lives in San Francisco, where he volunteers with San Francisco Recreation & Parks in habitat restoration.
    Sunk City
Fingers pinned against a gate. Sunk City, its favored hues gray and black and smoke and puce. Civic attire. The stylus a tongue inscribing its exits’ graffiti on the muddle we’ve become. A yellow bird flowering in the mud, snow flecked, slush to ash, a seasonal omen or error. Its black streaks breathe in the colors before they melt. Evade erasure mimicking night, its million streaming flakes. A yellow feather pinned to a coat, letting slip away its threadbare fabric of sun.
Body Blur
You disappear a fog into another body, blur its supple outline. What’s left of you an incoming tide of chords, after image, spent breath. Who to whom am I speaking to now? A mouthful of sound, snow spray against a face, crocus up through the snow, daffodils or some yellow outburst. Wings that make visible the wind. All part of the days we’ve passed.
Night’s vibrations holding us in an aura of flying bugs. We cross the lawn, swat away the air we dream. Silver letters shimmering against the dark, flow down its dark screen in rivulets a cryptic storm.
Fingers pinned against a gate. Sunk City, its favored hues gray and black and smoke and puce. Civic attire. The stylus a tongue inscribing its exits’ graffiti on the muddle we’ve become. A yellow bird flowering in the mud, snow flecked, slush to ash, a seasonal omen or error. Its black streaks breathe in the colors before they melt. Evade erasure mimicking night, its million streaming flakes. A yellow feather pinned to a coat, letting slip away its threadbare fabric of sun.
Body Blur
You disappear a fog into another body, blur its supple outline. What’s left of you an incoming tide of chords, after image, spent breath. Who to whom am I speaking to now? A mouthful of sound, snow spray against a face, crocus up through the snow, daffodils or some yellow outburst. Wings that make visible the wind. All part of the days we’ve passed.
Night’s vibrations holding us in an aura of flying bugs. We cross the lawn, swat away the air we dream. Silver letters shimmering against the dark, flow down its dark screen in rivulets a cryptic storm.
    Strung together
The Wilds
His left eye twitches stitching off rhythms whenever the silent
signals arrive receptors wired birds too their visceral patterns of
flight against the wind’s collapsing cities a burning feather a
scorched tongue the snake’s timed articulation off beat looking to
shed its skin but aren’t we all no pleasures permitted he said till
after the revolution yet a voice in the wilderness rehearsing still
backstage the circle its perfect absence the dread at its center
after the collision of objects mistaken for birds, trees dripping orange, do you think this maybe a small thing, Miles in the middle register, muted, a wedding beside the waves, the long of it and the short of it, instructions along the kelp line, anxiety slipping into its coordinates, shadows stain the slope, his tilt into it a perfect angle, the plant pulled downward into the earth empties the air, the chambers of the chambers of—smell me, you said, again that faint promise of a smile, smell me—
Everything and Nothing
A hanging rope suspension bridge arcing under the seafarer’s
bethel eclipse there in another place the ashes of their
kingdom a bird in the ruins miming the blustery weather’s
invisible handout a signifying monkey its grifter’s con calls up
empty vessels everywhere the trickster damp light shrouds the
forest’s canopy but in the distance a gold strip along the sea’s
horizon shedding into the troposphere
Out and About
tubular transit diegetic notes waver in the backlot a puddle of
soaking leaves she skips across romantic remnants call to the
aesthete they conspire walk through clues breathe together
bird-dotted wires above the alley its musical notations spread
across a sheet of thought as waves of rain saturated with
metaphor sweep up the sidewalk the lone ginkgo covered with
yellow fan-shaped leaves their autumn
Patrick Cahill’sThe Machinery of Sleep (Sixteen Rivers Press) came out in 2020. His prose and poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. A cofounder and editor of Ambush Review, he was also a contributing editor for the Sonoma County anthology Digging Our Poetic Roots. He received his Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz and wrote a study of Whitman and visual experience in nineteenth-century America. Portions of this work have appeared in The Daguerreian Annual and Left Curve. Patrick lives in San Francisco, where he volunteers with San Francisco Recreation & Parks in habitat restoration.
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