Christopher Phelps
Potted Garden
Was to get into the ground
both too modest and too morbid
a goal to have
filled in a hole with earth
and thought it whole or hale
the same thing same word almost
where every step could be
planted and tended
orange unto pink
herb and hearty flower
given a sort of home
that could rest in a flourish
or move into the future
in one and the same breath
if occasion came
for love to last that long
Time Ticks Toward the End of the World
Assumes there is a world with an end,
as in, an aim. “No, damn it, I don't mean
semantics, so spare me your antics
and legerdemain.” But my love,
I was anxious at three. Thin fingers
to count the ways is all I’ve ever known,
and worry people with their
glued-on hair of ash.
“Do you mean worry dolls?” Of course
I'd call them by another name, so close
you can taste the difference: how do you hug
something smaller than the fingers of a child?
“Can we be serious while there’s time?”
Could time be less serial for a change?
“I see, so that’s a no.”
How about you wrap me up in the conclusion
you brought to the potluck, knowing it would
agree with everyone. Everyone but the likes of me,
reverse-psychological, with a thumb in my mouth
when it’s my turn to speak for the alarm.
“Alarm in the end numbs: try joy and purpose,”
I blurt out through a crack in a closing door.
I think of Dickinson talking through the gap
between the frame and the surprise,
hearing one loud and clearly across floors.
Across a neverending emergency
in the urgency of now: do you ever not
begin to question worry in a prayer
to a little set of dolls so brightly colored in their clothes
you could believe in the thoughtfulness of people?
“How do bright colors equal thoughtfulness?”
In their desire to make haste vibrate! Not sink
deeper in the stomach. Faith like sight
of something but a clamped and clenched release.
“If I understood any less of your myopia,
I'd wonder who was seeing things.”
If I knew you any better, I’d ask you who you are,
the friend or the buzzer at the door.
Christopher Phelps is a queer, neurodivergent poet. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he teaches himself and others math and related conundra. He is searching for people who believe poetry can be equally vulnerable and inviolable; welter-weather letters in a fare-thee-well time. His poems have appeared in periodicals including Beloit Poetry Journal, Palette Poetry, Poetry Magazine, The Nation, and Zoeglossia. A chapbook, Tremblem, was semi-privately printed in 2018. More information can be found at www.christopher-phelps.com.
