by Clay Waters (April 2026)
In the Portrait Wing
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matches and wax
the only tickets today
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the sepia sunlight dissipates
at the next turning
and no human fingers
will spin the lights on again
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impressionism pale memories of green
expressionism useless with no one to explicate
portraiture now riveting:
the eyes of the dead
prim and proud on horseback
or racked in agony
follow you through the ages
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do they wonder where we all went
the beard strokers
the soup hurlers
the rectangle-dangling digitizers of their souls
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the chaos descending too quick
for fleeting fortune-hunters
to free them from their gold frames
mass thermonuclear inflation
leaving worthless currencies and lively leukemia behind
=
why am I here,
wasting steps while
chipped away insidiously from inside?
must I spoil their chained peace
haunt their hauntings
their eyes following my expiring light
with blank affront
in this new feral world
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fear not; your creators plowed
through their own pestilence
blood hacked and hocked
over unfinished canvases
bones stretched and hammered
at the joints
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hues fading in unlit garrets
yet still enduring
a perverse killing focus
chipping from the inside
unpromising stone into perfection
(as close as we got)
now immured in the walls
of these hushed halls
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my own blood betrays me
at the delicate foot of a maiden:
red riot spewed on white marble
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sharp iron for you
impalpable plutonium for me
victims both
me of my time
you of your timelessness
=
however you succumbed,
by drips and drops,
bed, battle, dungeon,
rest your eyes:
It’s all settled now.
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(Florida)
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this long-toothed coast,
Rorschach of the national soul,
funny dogleg, sunken
into the lowest quadrant on the map
weighed down by weirdness
until ennui achieved density
=
sun-stoned days
lay dried up on Donald Duck towels,
stunned and shucked into the steamy grass
denial, our fountain of youth
=
margaritas shake out View-Master memories
of extinct turtles
long-gone orange groves
girls dancing under glass
recollection afloat on our collective conscious
poured into one still sodium sea
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are we a special sort of sea shell?
another grain of sand?
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no one will be awake
to tell the difference
when the beach goes under again.
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Bondi Beach
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Matilda was enjoying a petting zoo at the festivities on Sunday just before she was killed along with 14 other people in a mass shooting targeting Jews. —AP
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A special-shaped darkness resides
in the middle of our eyes
that lets your light in still
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coddling me out of the caring cage
the side of your face
painted blue-fish
my patchy brown-and-white back stroked,
my nub of head
approached with near fear,
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my stomachs buoyed in warm milk
hemmed into that tiniest conclave of contingency
nuzzled in a la la la lullaby
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the soft lie of serenity
before the havoc rained
metal and flesh
lights large and small gutting out
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high bleating
then gutter sounds,
the bleeding line at the grate,
my cloved hooves
sturdy over your stout, stilled heart.
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What would you have passed on, little one?
Your hair piled like hay,
Your four-teeth bite
Your pats gentle as baby duck down?
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Your lullaby
in their warped braincase
like the shudder of the snake
emerging from the garden
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Your light
a refining fire
the candle set apart
to relight the world
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Cupcakes
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Two, sheltered under the street’s
last oak, raising the descant chant
“Magic Cupcakes for Sale!”
“Only One Dollar!”
“Pink Ones and Blue Ones! Magic-”
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Peripheral colors streak past
rear angel view revealing
a full plate of a day’s dashed hope
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a sprinkle of salt
sure to be whisked away
in a frothy mélange future:
princess appointments and puppies,
kitchen parties, ocean fugues
recipes rising to sweet completion
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Yet, struck by an absent oak
on a lumpy sidewalk
you’ve returned
to loop the path untaken
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Senses on the hook
two dollars folded in your head
obliged to the ghosts
hope and forgetfulness
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dodging butterflies underfoot
listening for the lost magic
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Millions of Breaths
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This left turn
into the last room
scuttles no grand plans
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no orchestra
awaits her grand opera
of a German Shepherd’s doomed love
for a French Bulldog
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no nightmares
of her progeny
running out of rawhide chew
disturb her whinnying sleep
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and certainly no lover to weep—
not since the great severing
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in fact
she seems to have
no thoughts at all
which I envy:
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being tossed gently as a beanbag
into that last, best sleep
unweighted with worry
of flames
singing her tangled rump eternally
no heaven strung with harps
too shy to bark at
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millions of breaths
none more significant than another
a 22-inch measuring stick
that placed everything else in scope
little things that needed protecting
thoughts bigger than myself
that needed thinking
=
her high opinion
leaving me
something to attain—
patience for the blind, for one
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If I manage a billion breaths
the ones in this white room
will matter the most
Table of Contents
Clay Waters has had poems published in The Metaworker, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Santa Clara Review, and Poet Lore. He writes for NewsBusters, a conservative media watchdog blog. He lives in Central Florida, close enough to the theme parks to hear the fireworks.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
