THERE IS NO LANDING PARTY

Their thirsts quenched, the guests spread like fire ants throughout the city. Afterward, the red bulbs were extinguished &the remnants were rounded up by those of us who had stayed behind. We gathered music into the bottles; we taught the fireflies to dance. Each of us wished upon them individually as stars. We named them as constellations, &we followed each other home.

+a landing party / adrift among the bottles / empty & of light

THE STURDY TEETH OF PINES

Nearing a dark-shrouded road in the hills, you say your heart is not a racer &imply something crass with a metaphor about love &fuel-injection—such a curious thing to say so late into the evening, civilization passing behind us without as much as a farewell. A copse of pines carries a smirk like a lion’s mane—a thought you dispense of too lightly, given both could swallow us all the same. Like us, a country road honors no ties to the living; it appears &then dissolves, apologies granted to none. Only our rivers will carry &pass these things we’ve said, &mix them with the whispers of the words that have gone before.

+salt mingles with dirt / the open heat of skin / daylight, hurry home

LEAF

It was all because of that time you said fire; how our eyes glanced the ground where we stood, &how that which was there in the beginning had become the only thing that would remain in the end—a single red seed resembling the rough form of a hand, outstretched &upturned.

+objects objectified / ground holding ground, holding / ground, holding ground

OLD WOLF

Night unfolds its arms of barren branch &hollow. Ripples of ink shove shoreward, &empty themselves in the sand. How clouds uncover the moon, the eye of a half-wolf awakened. The water’s face becomes a new day in perfect imitation of the sun.

+the rendering of faces / quiet soliloquies / the body is a city of dreams

David Tomaloff is a writer, photographer, musician, and all around bad influence. His work has appeared in fine publications such as Mud Luscious, >kill author, Connotation Press, HOUSEFIRE, Prick of the Spindle, DOGZPLOT, elimae, and many more. He is the author of the chapbooks 13 (Artistically Declined Press), A SOFT THAT TOUCHES DOWN &REMOVES ITSELF (NAP), Olifaunt (Red Ceilings Press), EXIT STRATEGIES (Gold Wake Press) and MESCAL NON-PALINDROME CINEMA (Ten Pages Press). He resides in the form of ones and zeros at: davidtomaloff.com