FIVE POEMS by NOAH POWERS
Stars in a Line Dance
An astronaut touches his hand to a nebula’s foamy purple
strands, disintegrates. There was dust, people,
dust again, if you subscribe to the flattening of the disc.
An amplification of pulse emanates from each hand held
under soft June moonlight, except the moon has exploded,
so where does that leave us? A star keeps us all alive,
then it dies, too. I could list a million galaxies and get to the end
of nothing except my will to list and your patience. I strap my brain
to a TechDeck and roll it over the steepness I imagine of Olympus Mons.
Where will it go? That’s not my concern anymore, now I sit;
I can put any old space rock behind my eyes and let it think.
I can put any old words onto a radio wave, fire them gently
in your general direction, but I cannot make you hear them.
If I could, there would be a happy space rock somewhere
and the star may hold out a few more years before dying.
The arms of some star collections would wrap around me,
then you, heat us into ash, ash swirls among those stars in a line dance—
you are from Texas after all—until it picked up extraterrestrial
materials and birthed a world of its own. A comet shoots by, whispers:
we finally made it, can you believe that? Maybe
there was something beautiful in destruction on Earth, too,
blocked out by all those lights, they made it seem like what was dead
could never be again, rearranged the dust just so
when the day came, our fingertips were out of place, confused,
and nothing fit at all.
The Toad Started Talking
One day, the toad began to talk
in a low register, not in a baritone,
but in the thrum-hum of a fridge
against a stone wall in an unfinished basement—
I am thinking of my friend Christian’s basement
the one at the house his parents built
that we almost lived in together
in which he hosted us for pool & birthday parties
and we talked about girls in high school
who almost never liked us as much
as we liked them, which was fine because
we had no business being in love
and the toad’s thrum-hum reiterates that sentiment—
he tells me I do not deserve love
through his hateful vibrations and gurgles
his speech resembles the mouth-wash-spit
routine at the dentist, which reminds me of the ex
who said she would never love me if my teeth were ugly
but I had braces once when I was ten and again
at sixteen after I became so insecure
about how my top row of teeth rests over the bottom
like a low cloudline over a forest of yellow-tinged trees
and this cost my mother so much money that when I complained
about the metal cutting into my gums, she told me
I chose this, because I did, and my crush, then, had braces, too,
which also made me nervous to talk to her, because what if
we kissed, you know, and the braces became tangled
in one another, not in a romantic way, in a Final Destination way,
and our teeth ripped out in unison, our mouths were gummy,
opening to reveal nothing but a tongue, pink flesh,
exactly like the mouth of the toad whose thrum-hum
is now the bone-striking vibration of a tornado as it rolls
through cornfields, over homes, etc., and the sound in its throat
grows until it swallows my head, leaves me as I am.
A Western Starring Noah Powers’ Former Self
Noah Powers corrals a whole ass train
and rides it like a rodeo clown.
His lips on Noah Powers’ neck ride from earlobe
down carotid to clavicle to Jesus Christ!
His tongue a slow roller wave over Noah Powers’ skin;
his body a flag flapping in the wind at half mast, wait, full mast,
combs itself through the air around Noah Powers.
A rodeo clown rides a bull and Noah Powers grabs the horns,
pulls until a train whistle explodes from grunted silence
(how can silence be grunted, the audience asks—
the answer is in-between shades of desert orange).
Noah Powers is a hunk of flesh in a brown vest, beige shirt,
brown chaps, boots too, silver spurs sparkle in San Antone sun
that rays itself onto burnt sand, rock, ex-riverbeds
(is the river sheet or mattress, Noah Powers wonders,
his two blood orange eyes crisscross a stream’s grave,
collect quick glances at Noah Powers’ heatwave thighs).
His hand wraps around the handle, fingers grip,
slip against the trigger like body against body
in a desert sex scene. Sorry, sorry, I mean the finger
teases the trigger until it shoots old Noah Powers in the chest
and someone hears the body fall. Ten paces, no, twenty paces away
a little boy hides behind a barrel stuffed with dynamite.
Noah Powers stands over his former self and cries. A little boy
whimpers behind a dynamite barrel (where’s the wick?) and says:
“we’re all alone now.”
A manufactured wind sweeps the tears
from Noah Powers’ face, big fans blast sandy air
across the face of a person who used to be a little more person
than he is now. His mouth opens to say a word, maybe two,
but the only sounds are the film’s flicker as the reel wraps,
a crowd’s perhaps-too-eager applause.
Prose Poem Wherein I Am Spanish Moss
There was this one time I fell in love but I never wanted to. When cows rang out like foghorns and grass parted in ways unheard of in the Florida panhandle. It was not the panhandle, but the musty whiskers of a manatee. The cow of the sea, they will tell you, and they will be dolphins amid the seaweed, swamp, and brackish muck. On a wooden pier, the sun is a cantilever and I am Spanish moss, do not touch me. I am Spanish moss, do touch me if you want me to be part of you in ways I am not now. I wish you would. I wish to dance ballet in Russia with the other beautiful mosses but my children hold me back. Don’t they always? On a wooden pier, we walk across the Gulf until Florida does not exist, only water exists. We walk back because the sun sets in the east and I need to see it every time. I dive in the water, a shark carries me home in its jaws like a dog with an egg. I trust the water as I trust the tree I hang from when I am Spanish moss. But you cannot touch me then. If we go now, I will sink into the sand, never breathe real air again, if I do not sink I will let the sun burn untilI evaporate and follow you in a cloud of steam. You would turn on industrial fans and break my heart again. You would stay on the beach until the breeze picked up and swept me up to Alabama. Remember when I was Romeo, you Juliet, your window only open after dark, your mouth full of poison I swallowed—a good boy—until my lips purpled, my head only existed on a stage? You brought me a gift disguised as a billy club to the throat mid-winter. There was this one time I moved a stone a sign said not to move, waded in the green velvet of your couch, nearly drowned. After, we ate trash until our hearts gave out and saw a musical in a theater nearby. It was all so simple.
Cotton Balls Eat the Sky
It is the second of February and a steam engine has rolled through my home,
my bed is in Tulsa, my dresser in Kansas City, and my bathroom supplies launched
themselves into the sky. It made sense when the cotton balls out-grazed the clouds,
when there was so little blue left that people began making new metaphors, new names
for shades of blue—instead of sky blue there was “your bed is in Tulsa” blue or “your partner
does not love you anymore and it’s only a little your fault” blue. I work at a paint store, and
these new blues flew off the shelf. Meanwhile, the cotton balls consumed the heavens above.
There were specks of black poking through now as if we had all closed our eyes and opened
them quickly, and the cotton balls were still hungry, apparently, because the moon was never
seen again. It was not a concern until the waves stopped rolling, sailboats sat still still bedazzled
with swimsuit wearers, and even then only their calls were ever heard about it. My home has a
big hole in the side the shape of the hole in the sky that once held the moon. Maybe the steam
engine and the cotton balls are in cahoots, maybe they teamed up to destroy everything I love
because I really loved the moon, and I loved, too, the person who once slept in that Tulsa bed.
Noah Powers (they/he) is a queer Southerner writing poems and teaching high school English in Kentucky. Their writing has been published in Rejection Letters, Bullshit, DON’T SUBMIT!, Fish Barrel Review, and Autofocus. They can be found on Twitter @_noahpowers.