Mania Poem #1
by James Moran
You’re running through the fire,
burning in the fire.
Everything about you, around you
burns – wild.
You have all the water
you could ever need,
enough to put out the flames.
But you drink the water,
keep drinking,
even though you’re not thirsty.
You believe that you’re the fire.
Tag: Issue Nine James Moran
CONCERTINA, James Moran
Concertina
by James Moran
When your body collapses onto mine,
I expect you to make me feel small:
smaller than the head of a burned matchstick;
a promise tucked beneath a whisper;
cavity in a tooth.
When it’s over I’ll be a broken-winged sparrow
in your hands, a shattered compact mirror;
clod of dirt you mistook for a rock,
now clay and ash slipping through your fingers
in a stream of dust.
Whether you like it or not,
you’ll make me into these things
because I’m willing to become them.
And when you come inside,
nothing can prepare you
for what I’ll become next,
what I end up becoming.
A NIGHT IN YOUR CITY, James Moran
A Night in Your City
by James Moran
After the concert, we leave the club
and run to the parking deck, past
insurance banks and law firm buildings,
large and ornate as Gothic cathedrals.
When we stop halfway, we laugh and gasp
until clouds burst and vanish around our
flushed faces, our parted lips on the brink
of chapped. Your tongue flicks out,
but only to snag the snakebite piercing
back in place. The vault of my jaw snaps shut.
As I try to forget how my eyes caught
that flesh-colored eel darting between your teeth,
I turn to the city wrapped in its gray veil,
its buildings too tall to fathom—too rigid, too steel,
cold as their countless windows, closed and unlit.
James Moran is a current MFA candidate in poetry at North Carolina State University. His writing has appeared in Semaphore Magazine, and his poetry has been nominated for the 2016 AWP Intro Journals Project. He lives in Sanford, NC.
Barking Sycamores 