Tabernacle
By Thomas Piekarski
Jill preens the submissive Pomeranian
even though it’s deaf and near blind.
I’m in the grips of fantasmia, scrambling,
angling for any measure of release.
Sometimes it’s okay to boogie board
in the buff. Observe Nostradamus,
animated, cheering from the sideline.
On the internet it said the ocean floor
is almost covered with dead fish
and copious organic matter killed off
by excessive radiation. Bound to be
at least a tad of cruelty involved
whenever planets or money are at stake.
Upon deep reflection it was concluded
that the crab got its shell cracked
by traveling over a seabed fumarole
that huffed like a steamboat.
Verse the mistress automatically
ostracized despite omission of sin.
The quite popular congressman forced
by obsequious powers to laud fracking.
Rationality intimated that magnolias
indicted for fraud were vindicated.
Too many dimensions to count
on fingers and toes. I man up
to the challenge or don’t forgive myself.
Darkling, won’t you allow the people
a break from your illogical refractions?
Nowhere Land
By Thomas Piekarski
Another year gone by and nowhere to go,
hither absconded and yonder way past
wonder strayed. Ecliptic visions united
in an untied future. Who maintains
adequate resolve to blunder, misty
through lavender fields in June?
January rain isn’t enough. We need
snow, at least 50 feet of it, and now,
enough to bury Monticello.
Heavenly
By Thomas Piekarski
“Sans friends you’re a tinker’s damn.”
They are indeed rare. So keep them
locked up, away from those cagy
vagabond gnomes that oar
the length of the copper
ocean shore.
“Heaven’s better after you die.”
When they pronounced my sister
dead, no pulse,
breathing at a halt,
it was heaven she lingered in,
gazing down upon
her limpid flesh.
But then, miraculously
she was brought
all the way back to life
by loyal friends
in sterile white smocks.
Moonless
By Thomas Piekarski
A bull playing his warped fiddle
may bemoan a moonless sky, but once
the stars appear—maroon, pink, fuchsia,
tangerine, chartreuse, ruby red and azure,
his pleasure is assured despite
ambivalence of that silent
temptress who rules the tides.
Glacier
By Thomas Piekarski
The shield to my upside-down
ostensibly indigenous profile
is feeling vulnerable.
Innocence won’t let the body
understand what the mind can’t.
It would seem quicker
should I jump ship and simply sink.
Stentorian concussions parade
a constellation of mirrors before me
from which I’m forged.
Liberty shines, but doesn’t blink.
Melting vascular escalators sing
“Anchors Away” for a swarm
of venerable distractors.
My bounty awaits
while illusions opt
to pop inside
an estranged imagination
as I slit through life
like a knife.
Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry and interviews have appeared in Nimrod, Portland Review, Kestrel, Scarlet Literary Magazine, Cream City Review, Poetry Salzburg, New Plains Review, Poetry Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine, Poetry Pacific, Third Wednesday, Avatar Review, Vox Poetica, Main Street Rag, The Artistic Muse, South Jersey Underground, The Tower Journal, Poetry Super Highway, Lowestoft Chronicle, Eunoia Review, and many others. His travel guide, Best Choices In Northern California, was published by Gable & Gray. He lives in Marina, California.
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