Brunt of Solar Wind
what the first grader learned about grown-ups in his short life is not to trust, not to believe: he is staunch in his tenets: the boy will admit missing mother: his strong sense for survival is a muscle in the wind pushing from behind: he’s confident enough to take on adult insurrections like a child’s game and laughs at their foibles: friends are treated with cagey contempt if he suspects a transgression: he claims he is an open book but careful language hides his intentions
he is not worried about what may develop
Uninvited
the narrow days spill like an empty milk carton
a december sun teases a false warmth
confusing a ladybug motionless on the screen
first snow is forecast in the overnight
excited children will wake and likely pull
their toboggans to the park hill across the street
and i too will be confused
pressing my nose to the pane
ruing on why i am unable to join them
Sharpening Iron
she hides under gold leaf: then dissolves into visibility: she swears she was raised that way: it’s as if a revolving virus had seeded her consciousness: she dares you to be complacent though she’s confident you’ll lack the mettle to return: the clock is not a rusty iron gate you can escape from: in the half-life it offers, she recites hosanna, hosanna in the highest like a triggering incantation and fingers her silver artifact: she walks on the gravel of his speech, a tenderfoot on slag: she has welded together her mercurial persona with a cobalt sky: fused to it she hides in an aluminum glare of her visibility: a place where the billy-blazes smelting of her gray matter is done
impurities, like blood, run off into rutty rivulets
Dan Sicoli, an editor with Slipstream, has two new poetry chapbooks, Slag Alley,( Ethel Zine Press, 2026) and Under the Floorboards (Bottlecap Press, 2026). A three-time Pushcart nominee, he’s placed poems with Chiron Review, Hellbender, Hobo Camp Review, Home Planet News, Hood of Bone, Santa Barbara Literary Journal, Spirit Lake Review, Steam Ticket, and Trampoline, among many others. Visit: www.slipstreampress.org/dan-sicoli
