Five Poems | Gerard Duncan Jr.

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.