Worship

Promiscuous
as Prometheus
she brings home the fire
of other caves

and gives
in curious stalls
from grief

one more consequence
with devotion.

*

Puddle

In a labor of unease
I crouch with worry.

Her naked limbs dredge
limp un-intertwined

cast to the floor as if fallen
some small height

and sinking still.
I make my ear a halo to her lips

and listen
(you can’t say I never listen).

Resting my fingers
above her damp lips
I consider clasping.

Sweetheart

Depression is her mother
of invention.

Wake up

Does she really want
to lie here, diminishing

like a heavy stone
in the mouth of a river?

Sweetheart

If only there was some tiny pill
for this.

*

You are So Cool:
On that First Drive to the Behavioral Health Facility

How does the AM/FM know
which song will cut most

deep into the drive goodbye?
I keep thinking of reasons

not to notice that don’t work,
because you’d not said anything (

about your endless
sorenesses or the bat resting in the breezeway
for four limp days) needed fixed,

because that’s always how I tell.

Even when you’re mad you sing and play.
But you haven’t sung so much now

it’s left its felt of cosmic quiet
roaring over the interior
of our first dedication.

*

Jeremy Casabella teaches English and writes poetry, short stories, and pwoermds in Bakersfield, California.  His most recent poems appear in The Invisible Bear, Eclipse, Shot Glass, Route 7, The Ekphrastic Review, Vinyl, and The American Journal of Poetry.  His pwoermding is featured in the anthology The Wisdoms of the Universes in a Single String of Letters from Xexoxial Editions.