Gage Anderson | Somewhere, Petrifying & More

Somewhere, Petrifying

Somewhere, a fish bloats itself to bare its pines.
a sonnet of dry grass clads itself in brushfire, bespoke like a jacket.
broken glasses promise a night of bleary sobriety.
Dallas realizes that she is not a heroin addict.
a polystyrene boy paints his nails.
a crustacean prays to a shelled god which lives above in the heaven called Soil.
Somewhere, Dallas dreams herself as vinyl, waiting for the needle to draw music from her skin.
a sonnet is unmade, and from its ashy carcass, a rhymeless gull calls itself Phoenix.
a deflated fish chews through the shell of a praying crustacean.
a boy wishes to disappear. He scrubs clean his nails and dives into the acetone.
a gull steals a sonnet’s blazer and momentarily lives up to its name.
Dallas funnels green glass dust into her ears. It is all she can do about the silence.
Somewhere, a vacant shard of crustacean carapace anchors itself to the sea floor soil: organic shatter.
a burning bird catches in a clothesline: tethered hell on wings, soot on the fresh sheets.
saltwater makes marble of men and crustacean bodies.
Dallas sleeps with more than blood in her veins. She hears music: lullaby.
a family who do not share blood mourn their boy. They paint their nails in the wake.
the first kite is serendipity: a dead bird, tethered hell on wings, will not land for its leash.

Contrapasso: In Which Actaeon Does Not Learn His Lesson

(After A Doe Replaces Iphigenia on the Sacrificial Alter)

There was a need
to be silent and I failed
it. I was born to the breaking
of my own skull
where ivory buds blossomed,
mimicked my own successes—
became my own trophy—admire
what you turned me into.
Admire
how I cannot stop
to indulge a wild glory
to regale the wildflowers.
Admire
my slick silk coat and
my absent hands and
Admire
my speed that’s not enough anymore and
Admire
your own sigil—do you hate me so much?
Admire
me
Admire
me
Admire me!

Please.
I hear my hounds’
chanting. A hungry half song, half
elegy, all ravenous and rotted. All
closing. All approaching as a carmine reaper.
The forest never looked so natural
before. I’ve never gone it so alone.
Oh, Diana.
I am one of your own now.
If my death means your loss—
I will not run.

When Is a Bird Not a Bird?

I have feathers and a beak

and claws and wings

What am I?

I am the morning call; I am the evening’s meal

I am the song and the voice and the eardrum

I am the spring tune turned cold. I am the breathless windchime

What am I?

There are birds, and there are animals, and they are not the same.

There are birds and there is me, and we are not the same.

And I have wings and beaks and a feathered claw

I live at the bottom of the ocean

with the aliens and the volcanic soup (the evening’s meal)

and there are animals above me that fly on feathered fins.

What am I?

When a bird is not a bird,

it must be a collection of bones and beaks.

I am the witch’s leftovers— quaff the poison potion.

I live at the bottom of your stomach

What am I?

There is poison and there is poetry; there is wine and there is zinc; there is

currency in keratin: I trade the skeleton for the ghost

and I am not a collection of bones and beaks

anymore

I am a light kept on in the theatre

I am a story that smells of fire.

Long ago

a dead goose lived six eighths of a summer on

a path that descends directly into the reservoir.

I have feathers and a talon

and a talent for weathering

I am teeth and pupils and beaks

and an empty stomach.

What am I?

As the Patron Saint of Walking Home

When the sun is out of encores—
the last streamers of orange have fallen
from the moon-licked dome above us—
I will walk you home.

When the store fronts are prison cells
and the streetlights dot the dark
like crooked baby teeth,
I will walk you home.

When Diana’s pale eye climbs
up and over the dimmed steeples
and lit cigarettes,
I will walk you home.

When the piercing sweetness of the market’s
fruit gives way to kilter sales
of roses and fireflies,
I will walk you home.

When the street is full of strangers
and your eyes are dinner plates,
fresh but breakable,
I will walk you home.

When you must lace your shoes
for the long walk back
and you know it will be a long walk back,
I will walk you home.

When the highway swallows the last
of your gas-meter and the night’s
too old to wait for tow,
I will walk you home.

Cuando los luces son globos
de rojo y azul y la noche
es un pintura de “¿que ahora?”
Te acompañaré a casa.

Cuando no hablamos el mismo idioma
y nuestras lenguas no saben
cómo descubrir cuentos en silencio,
te acompañaré a casa.

When the wax record
skips and skips and skips and skips and
the music is finally cut,
I will walk you home.

When I am lost on sideways streets
and have only the water’s still
voice to guide me back,
I will walk you home.

When it is no more than a hundred
paces from my door to your door
and only quiet space in between them,
I will walk you home.

When you have no home to go back to
I will build a bed for myself and give
you mine.
We can walk home together.

A Poet Applies to be God

Gage Anderson (He/Him) is a poet born in Centennial, Colorado and now based in Seattle, Washington. He graduated with a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. His poems have appeared in Bricolage Journal, South Broadway Ghost Society, AU: Speculative fiction Journal, Twenty Bellows and We Are the West: A Colorado Anthology.

Inspired by magicians, Gage seeks to make exceptional the mundane: make doves out of scarves. Gage believes that poetry is the closest he has ever come (or ever will come) to performing real magic.