Dan Reilly
History of Her Own Unattainable
She walks away
backwards and turning
clutching something
in her arms
again and again
she steps uncertain
along dark streets
fearful and seeking
a way out
of this dim town
west of the platitudes
and just north
of the miseries
she pauses
runs fingers through hair
that falls as ash
contemplating the choice
she cannot have
the essential thing absent
not there, not then.
Mothers Die Young
for Biancha
You will imagine how
your mother died
what she was
thinking, your thoughts
will change
as you get older.
I know this
and pass on to you
the sadness and fear
of a child lost
alone in the forest
you know the story
all the wolves
a magic toad or mirror
it's your story now
go ahead and say
what you didn't.
My mother forty years gone
still stands
on my chest sometimes
but she is light
like spirits must be and
I don't choke anymore
on the scent of eucalyptus.
We weren't there
when she died
we only did
what we could sometimes
mothers die young.
Dei Ex Machina
Nut is dying. Nut, my mother the sky goddess who swallows the sun each day then gives birth to light in the morning, lies weak on a narrow pallet in her small room of many gilt-edged mirrors and an old china cabinet of curved glass. She is dark as the earth beneath us, her eyes blackened from death, and she's languid, turning her head slowly, sighing. What can we do without her, I wonder, as we reminisce about our past together, my childhood, and a trip to Atlantic City, a long wooden pier, the hot sun.
“It’s summer,” she says, “you children are eight or ten years old.”
“Yes," I reply, "the hotel window is tall, opens in with no screen. Nothing between me and the ocean’s horizon.”
“The bicycles.”
Her laugh, ever so slight, raises infinitesimal motes of dust twinkling dimly in the air between us like distant constellations brought close.
“Your father rents bicycles built for two.”
The beach sand is warm, fine. Bright crystals reflect in the child’s fingers that are my fingers, now, years later. My bones are these grains of sand, faraway tiny little bits, my bones, my loves, my everything, cascading between fingers. Human phantasms walk the boardwalk in blinding sunlight, or glide-by silently on wide-tired bicycles, a tableau, a drama staged by surrealists . . . dei ex machina, the gods descend, the gods descend.
Dan Reilly lives with his wife Aggie in the Adirondacks where he had his first reading thanks to Mohawk poet Maurice Kenny. As a young man, he was lucky enough to attend classes by novelist Max Yeh and poet James Crenner; he worked in films and construction, bartended, driven truck and taxi, written for a newspaper, taught in prisons, owned a business, and lived in NYC and LA. His poetry was first published in Pif Magazine. He was a featured writer on The New Guard's BANG!page. Poems and stories have appeared in Closed Eye Open, Beyond Words Magazine, Obelus Journal, The Ocotillo Review of Kallisto Gaia Press and SPLASH! of Haunted Waters Press. His story "Muffled and Distant" received honorable mention in a Flash Fiction Magazine contest. "Dream an Emptiness" won third prize in poetry at The Chestnut Review. He and Aggie are just completing a children’s book. Artist Gail Foster is collaborating with him on a chapbook. Website: http://danreilly.org/