As spruce needles fan ripples in an enamel mug,
individual strokes in the characters
for mountains of daggers and seas of flame
dry on a legal pad. And with the key so close
to the space bar in the phone’s keyboard,
all of the spaces in your journal
about your honeymoon are taken up by a C.
The woman in the green fleece states that
some translations are inherently more irenic than others
moments before tripping over a rug
and dislocating her right elbow.
Ground orach blossoms have no bearing on colic;
recite each of the twelve names for him in turn.
S. G. Mallett
Contiguous Steles
About the Author
S. G. Mallett is a Best of the Net-nominated poet and the author of the full length poetry collections Disparate Logoi (Alien Buddha Press) and Sunolon (Vraeyda Media) along with the chapbooks A Brief History of Scarecrows (Back Room Poetry) and Markov Chainmail (Cactus Press). He reads poems for Chestnut Review; his poems, prose, and literary criticism appear in publications such as Dreich, Barzakh, Eunoia Review, Shanghai Poetry Lab, and Heavy Feather Review.