Origami Microchap

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Cover: Let your singing bird
take its place in your heart
by Lauri Burke

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STRICTLY PERSONAL

You get to keep the scars. What you do
with them is one way of living.

IT WAS ONCE CALLED A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

Not quite crazy, just a few hairs over and away. Not
at that hard edge. Time diagnosed, chemically so.

ROTE LEARNING A BURNT LANGUAGE

An excuse for a postcard photo of stars, long absent
light-shadows, one blind light-year away.

EXPLAINING EVERYTHING

A face crawls off a mirror, scraped free, not
wanting to be the mirror’s rejected lover

WRONG AGAIN AND STILL WRONG

A box defies being made into a gift, nicely wrapped.
The mind empty and whining. And there you are.

A THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

It's not enough to know this morning will empty its pockets
of falling snow and rise again, to argue against light.

PERSONAL FINANCE

Thirty dollars isn't a lifetime but it can be.
The stuff of life, dollar contradicting dollar.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS LITTERING THE TABLE

The question malingering after breakfast, waiting
to be asked again when undressing before bed.

A MIRROR

1. What It Sees

A mirror’s image: not a reflection, but obfuscated thought
impersonating a shadow. Afterthought as invention.

2. What It Thinks

The image in a mirror isn’t what’s been captured
but what its plagiarized thought invented.

SELF PORTRAIT WITH WINGS

I don’t know the world anymore
unfurling his wings.

THE 14th WAY OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD

When is a blackbird, God’s first version of night;
not a blackbird? Never,

ALTERED SNAPSHOT

Hope like photograph, painted unexpectedly
and exactly the right color.

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Mark Fleckenstein © 2021

A Library of Things

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Cover collage by JanK

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A LIBRARY OF THINGS
“But she saw him only twice.” “Yes, but that’s the beauty of her passion.”
--Henry James, The Turn of the Screw 

The soft hours of afternoon begin
to burn. The city skyline opens

its eyes. November, blue-cold. Breath,
frost sheathed conversation.

A thought stands on a terrace, but flesh.
An object, a photograph, a thing.

Blood runs warm through his right arm,
across his wrist, etching small words.

Imagine an impractical room, a looking glass
song, a door neither closed or open.

Startled words, unearthed, rejecting memories.

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Today's Horoscope:

When will a truly perfect moment appear,
in which a risk is guaranteed to pay off?

The truth is that right now is as good as it gets.
The stars urge you to leave your fears behind

and jump in wholeheartedly

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Wish on the moon, a new moon.
Wish to go back, turn slowly.

Listen slowly, remember, feel,
refine hope. Wishing to make

history just twelve seconds.

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The days’ held breath exhales
night, the moon, tardy stars,

fists full of darkness.
Heart-pummeled

aspirations faint against the air.

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The theory: make a line drawing
of everywhere you’ve ever lived,

and you end up drawing your own face.
The what, was, and where lived.

The mouth and lips practice being geographic.

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His disappointed, distracted, damned life,
a dream smeared on an unraveling mirror.

A mirror, empty, age-warped, dusted.
A bruise colored afterimage.

Incidental, incremental, inchoate, his life.

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He talks to himself, confuses word
upon word as longing, desire.

Skin-like callouses map detailed misunderstanding.

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Her thought, a sensual grammar,
intimate, like finishing

someone’s breath. Her voice,
her words, echolocated

hours later, rub his ears,

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The chaos of being human:
nerves, blood, skin, noise.

The sum of our mistakes:
What happens, what will

happen, what has happened.
Chance, the true body,

equal and opposite. Not quite dark, late
afternoon’s shrinking habit of light.

Repeated, quieted, slouching, cataclysmic.

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When flowers whisper the secret of their fragrance,
what it would be if possible,

May that find you.

Mark Fleckenstein © 2020