Damon Hubbs

I Hung A Rothko in a Poem

right there
in the big white
space I was saving for a stanza
for so long
that space looked at me accusingly
for so long
forlorn, tired of waiting
like an It Girl
sadly slinking home after
a party
only to realize
there was never
a party
and the space
larger, greater
more absent
than a Scandinavian sky,
so I take
a few nails
& crash them into
the whiteness
don’t bother measuring
or marking
or worrying
about eye-level  
just hammer fields
of color
ex nihilo

girls who cry at airports

i am in love with girls who cry at airports / i am in love
with the way
each sob sounds like an ice cube
tumbl
            i
               n
                  g   
out
of
an ice machine
at a Motel 6 on Venus

i am in love with the way their hushed voices sound like pumpkin-carriages swerving

this way
&
that
around Saturn’s rings

i am in love with the long dark runway of their words / sad & terminal
as Pluto’s hand-me-down blue parkas
i am in love with their peeling billboard eyes & red vending machine mouths
i am too late
& the girls who cry at airports too early

our flights
of fancy
never have enough
seats

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Damon Hubbs: film & art lover / pie bird collector / microgreens grower / author of the chapbook The Day Sharks Walk on Land (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). His second chapbook, Charm of Difference, is forthcoming in 2024 (Back Room Poetry). Damon's recent poems have been published in South Broadway Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Fixator Press, Otoliths, Apocalypse Confidential, and Book of Matches. He lives in New England. Twitter @damon_hubbs