Collider 2
Earth is Not the Only Place and Now is Not the Only Time
Mary-Kim Arnold | Lesle Lewis | Nathan Parker | Mathias SvalinaOnce upon a time a girl stole my bike.
I stole the gum she left
shimmering in tin foil
on the rail of a sun porch built deep
in an enchanted forest,
she stole my bike.
It was Strawberry Gum with a living
stream of flavor
that made me feel
beloved, before my life turned to cud.
There are countless ways to be wrong
about a person or an object
I see myself in passing cars
as if I lack specificity
Street names where I live all spell out
UNDERPERFORMING
Neighbors moving out but I
don’t miss them anymore
I give and give out myself until my petals drop.
I drink much more than my thirst.
I eat in a trance.
It is only my trance and only I see the guests.
One eats from half a plate.
One I know by another name.
A whole sweet moon drops below the trees and settles into my vest pocket.
Complicated and hard to climb is the mind in Gilsum.
I hear your constellations
blushing, nighttorn
& wearing their own starlight
like a robe. Memory
makes a necklace
out of light.
The body clocks
in starsquint & stone.
Our bookmarks rise and our eyelids flutter.
Earth is not the only place and now is not the only time.
It is not often that you can see the ocean between the moon and a field of cows.
When the cows become too strained and thin, we carry them in our arms.
We lay them around the trees just as the sun falls.
What if we marked the hours between sunrise and sunset and left the night unclocked?
Issue #2 Collaborators
For every issue of Collider, we ask our poets/collaborators to give us permission to collide their work with other poets from the issue to create a single long poem.
Here’s a list of issue #2 contributors with their piece:
Mary-Kim Arnold
There are countless ways to be wrong
about a person or an object
I see myself in passing cars
as if I lack specificity
Street names where I live all spell out
UNDERPERFORMING
Neighbors moving out but I
don’t miss them anymore
Mary-Kim Arnold is a writer, artist, and teacher. She is the author of The Fish & The Dove (Noemi Press) and Litany for the Long Moment (Essay Press). Other writings have appeared in Hyperallergic, Conjunctions, The Denver Quarterly, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere.
Lesle Lewis
I give and give out myself until my petals drop.
I drink much more than my thirst.
I eat in a trance.
It is only my trance and only I see the guests.
One eats from half a plate.
One I know by another name.
A whole sweet moon drops below the trees and settles into my vest pocket.
Complicated and hard to climb is the mind in Gilsum.
~~~
Our bookmarks rise and our eyelids flutter.
Earth is not the only place and now is not the only time.
It is not often that you can see the ocean between the moon and a field of cows.
When the cows become too strained and thin, we carry them in our arms.
We lay them around the trees just as the sun falls.
What if we marked the hours between sunrise and sunset and left the night unclocked?
Lesle Lewis is author of the books Small Boat, Landscapes I & II, lie down too, A Boot’s a Boot, Rainy Days on the Farm, and the chapbook, It’s Rothko in Winter or Belgium. She lives in New Hampshire and her website is leslelewispoetry.com.
Nathan Parker
Once upon a time a girl stole my bike.
I stole the gum she left
shimmering in tin foil
on the rail of a sun porch built deep
in an enchanted forest,
she stole my bike.
It was Strawberry Gum with a living
stream of flavor
that made me feel
beloved, before my life turned to cud.
In 2004 Nathan Parker received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama, where he has been an instructor in the English dept ever since. His first book, The Locust Diagrams, was published in 2015 by Noemi Press. To beat the Alabama heat he teaches hobbit-inspired lit classes in New Zealand and Norway each summer.
Mathias Svalina
I hear your constellations
blushing, nighttorn
& wearing their own starlight
like a robe. Memory
makes a necklace
out of light.
The body clocks
in starsquint & stone.
Mathias Svalina is the author of seven books of mostly poetry & he runs a Dream Delivery Service.