“The Seasons” and Other Works by A. Russell

Al Russell is a pansexual nonbinary tankie North Carolinian former educator parent dog lover who reads too many books, watches too many movies, and smokes too many cigs. Previous collections (available from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press) are titled Children of the Anxious City and Lookinglasshouse.

The Seasons
After The Seasons by Alphonse Mucha

fire burns
water
weighs
the top
of the head
down, plumbing fathomless
depths of a lake,
caught under ice, fingertips
singed printless
cold

stirs
a waking
giant woman,
bouncing
hips and mouth, she talks
with her hands and lights
the day, your savage bare brain bursts
into a thousand autumn leaves

Carrion

Big blue bird, why have you come like an aimless shadow that lost its glue?
You got me off the rocks, dropped me on this sad plateau
sticky with melon or fleshy juice, braised by wind.

I don’t have that kind of money.
Stop wiring me more.
I’ve been tossing at night.
When do I get to go home?

Once in a Lifetime

From whom did I buy this house, this turret
covered in thorns?
To whom can I sell this old creamy
leather seated Cadillac in the yard?
Who is this bird-costumed Vegas showgirl
with her guled tail dragging the ground
hawking things across the street?
Why does her reflection live
at the bottom of my teacup?
The road stretches beyond anything I am
capable of seeing, in the street that I live on,
in the ocean of time,
in the wake of its terrible,
instantaneous cyclone.

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