Questions
by Neil Carpathios
Is each star a hole
a soul made
going up into heaven?
Are tears the sweat of vision?
Is that formaldehyde
behind my earlobes
or are my nostrils being ornery?
Is God in the mirror, playing hide and seek,
holding His breath beneath glass?
Is the razor in the sink dreaming of a wrist?
When I open the window do I hear
a bone caught in the wind’s throat?
Was that a rescue boat
in my father’s pneumonia lungs
that was torpedoed when he quivered
in his coma at the end?
And those stars—
is each the shiny head of a bolt
where God screws the world
tighter to the beyond?
§
More from Neil Carpathios
The Function of Sadness This Is Not a Poem, Damn It What Happens Under the Overpass Sweetness §Neil Carpathios is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Playground of Flesh (Main Street Rag Press), At the Axis of Imponderables (winner of the Quercus Review Book Award), and the just released Beyond the Bones (FutureCycle Press). He is a professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio.
Leave a Reply