ZA-GA-ZIG

Marionette rain—

definite weather moves
towards a more
anything-color,

sloughing off
the wandering
wrapped around

a whip of decisions.
In the American lee
a piece of coiled twine moved.

Its lostness
is a curl,
a golden mean.

All anima mundi
goes

into the flesh of a journey
digs a dew-claw into

raw delight:
the yet-to-zag
the feral zig.

A shiny
moon of exploding trees
to chew on & see.

all or nothing
life ain't no "crow in the snow"
THERE

pocketbound, dog-eared star
tiny resilience
of sky
from the world out
& running.






Three Poems from AND SO WE WENT

ocotillo at night unsure
the best of the west
offers its implacables at night
when the mammals are active
and your shoulder’s skin
is soothed at least not hurt more

there’s no sense of loosestrife
some invasive half
a world gone

we use someone else’s letters
and of course the greens
of the grasses that don’t belong here

whether full colour or not,
they brush the retaining wall

becoming the index of
the unconsolation the desert brings

if your home must be elsewhere
to its encompassing—

just that: what is here is here
and it is stubbornly brown
and so we went




A ball of blue flame
hits the atmosphere
above a desert beach.
At midnight it gives
the baby rattlesnakes
their first shadows.

Callia Fornax just
one overheard name
among nostalgias
as the crow flies.
It brings you into
your remaining skin
if you admit your snakehood.

Beautiful furnace.
What is really going to go away
when we stay a part
with walking, looking
and ferocities that work
well with surveillance
unlike nature’s “whims”
under the aegis of whims
we follow the example
of a more whim-inclined nature
then become humans
taken aback.




You can be dreamless and well-informed
in coats and in whiteness, in a huff from behind.
Poplars, a beige place of worship, that fret.

This is what thinking of Arcadia will do

in no place an innocence
towering with kindly information.
This soundproof majesty,
who needs it?

Not given to despair
I have making, a have-ness
not of the will
a widest acceptance
with a special hammer as its origin,
haunted by its little power
and foolish eternal felicities that vanish.
You and I, among no man’s horizon.
Confidently expect.














Jared Stanley lives in the San Joaquin Valley of California. A chapbook, The Outer Bay, is just out from Trafficker Press. With Lauren Levin, he edits the magazine Mrs. Maybe






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