Five Poems | Gerard Duncan Jr.
POETRY
1/20/20251 min read
Let’s
pleat-pant dance
beneath kitchen tangerine
dream jitterbug lindy
one-hand rind-twist
shout out now
not yet held
head to headless
shirt on backwards
loose necktie dreamfast
lost in spin-cycle trance
The Not-poem
Clouded shapes shift in the sun while you pick raspberries from the backyard bushes. I watch roly-polies crawl. Your hands start to stain; I blink your skin wrinkled. We forget how to breathe; I remember. I think, why are you sitting on your feet? You are a not-child.
We moonbathe in the bright. Stars carve our feathers. I eat the raspberries from your hands, but vines grow over your wings. Thorns preen us. Seeds fill my stomach. Your black bead watches me. It starts to rain on our not-bird heads.
You sprout scales. The water gives me gills. We fish-kiss the air because we cannot fly. Your glasses cry tulips, pink and yellow. My feet petal into tail. I swim circles in your pond and hope to wake from this not-dream.
Tabernacle of Us
my kangaroo scrotum pouch holds
belly button lint
a tonsil stone
that scrunched-up straw wrapper
you threw at me last month
and some pubic hair
you left in the shower
I’m too afraid
to carry the scrotum
inside my front pocket
in case my body gets confused
instead I leave it nestled
in a ball of hamster fur
next to your toe-nail shavings
and discarded gum
Truth Be Told
I press my face to mirror
most every morning irises shine better
when refracting in bask
of knockoff LEDs
the toothbrush suspects vanity
soft-to-medium bristles
conspire with waxed floss
blue thread fibers find their way
under tongue I think
water is my only friend
metal flecks my teeth
rinse rinse spit
the elements are stacked
against me I used to know
them all Ruthenium my favorite
I’m not sure why
I don’t even know anyone named Ruth
System Shakedown
you came to me through
echolocation scanned
an atlas to find
my beachcombed door
used Milky Way radar
across grains of stars
at the bottom of my
backyard tide pool
swim with me
into chalk dust
sunset tucked behind
your left ear
we’ll tear down this mountain
one Lego at a time
Gerard Duncan Jr. is from Walla Walla, WA, and has lived in Prague and throughout the US. He earned a PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi and an MFA from Eastern Washington University. Gerard’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Deal Jam, Hot Pot, Mania Magazine, The Periwinkle Pelican, and elsewhere.