New Poetry by Sam Cherubin: “Don’t About Not,” “Mermaid Tavern,” and “Emerald Inula”

Don’t About Not

If I can’t or think
            do it like I’m doing now

a beach
            sun holding me

I am holding space
            not space itself

not looking
            being 

gathering toward me

sun’s filaments

fluidity
            is all I need 

 

Mermaid Tavern

A night-wind touching bare backs lying down
and bare arms spooned across my bed, in blue
light dreaming over skin, light-fingered sparks
of seaweed, dendrites rippling through the room.

Scales rubbed against smooth sheets, in silver
puddled water, a smell of open
ocean, roseate tips of waves, our hips’
undulations, in my body’s rhythmic memory.

 

Emerald Inula

i.

Apples in Schiller’s desk, Balsam of Peru, rockrose,
rose alba, Helichrysum Everlasting, Immortale.
Why can’t this be enough?

ii.

Dried petals staining the pages.
Attar of cells breathing sun.
Flesh never accepting, but aching.