Degrees
1
Time’s up in the trees,
up in the mountains,
all the way up to timberline.
That’s time’s freeze;
time’s turn.
That’s our burn
uncontrolled and
uncontrollable?
Contrast: control.
We are not symmetric,
whatever our faces,
whatever our thumbs.
Don’t be surprised
by a little heat,
they implore.
Who’s afraid of a little
heat? they ask, trying to shame
fear. This high, up here, there’s
no lightning you don’t see
coming, they hope
for themselves.
Us and them: bares
awares and
unawares. Plural
tenses like a verb.
2
Reveal or revale:
there but for the mountains
up in smoke go I.
Go I, go I. Releafed;
reified, the sight of time
without an end in sight.
I think: but those ashes
were meant to be alive,
then catch the precious
feeling as it fails.
I trust the clouds will decide
what to do with us,
whatever wind in the sails.
That old word, trust,
in its phrasal catch,
I trust, or to change
keys for needles,
a threnody threaded
from holocausted pine,
aspen, and juniper
could be a rule of threes
to deny right up
to the line where
there is no sand.
Bask in this burn,
will you,
the wind threatens.
The streams proceed
their waterclock
without a tock;
all tick, slip, and giggle.
Wait any later and watch
a few billion shrugs
in their native habitat
starve for the wherewithal
to fall.
The quaking preachers bunker-far;
hung up, this cool breeze
so wonderfully made it’s
ominously amended
by the glare of amends
omitted in the announcement
of our little menu. With so little time
to tell caterpillars and mule dear
all that we have written out.
3
The way things turned up, the twos
became a dream from a previous life,
the sort of dream that feels out of reach
even as it happens, or am I alone
in having only one kind of lucid dream,
where I keep pushing on the walls to feel
if they’re canvas or fishnet?
Who wouldn’t want to check
whether this is a VR version
of something charming if chastened
by times like these, which are which?
I itch to find my fingers five in a row,
which is never how I’ve counted,
which is how I know I’m dreaming.
Time’s up in the trees,
up in the mountains,
all the way up to timberline.
That’s time’s freeze;
time’s turn.
That’s our burn
uncontrolled and
uncontrollable?
Contrast: control.
We are not symmetric,
whatever our faces,
whatever our thumbs.
Don’t be surprised
by a little heat,
they implore.
Who’s afraid of a little
heat? they ask, trying to shame
fear. This high, up here, there’s
no lightning you don’t see
coming, they hope
for themselves.
Us and them: bares
awares and
unawares. Plural
tenses like a verb.
2
Reveal or revale:
there but for the mountains
up in smoke go I.
Go I, go I. Releafed;
reified, the sight of time
without an end in sight.
I think: but those ashes
were meant to be alive,
then catch the precious
feeling as it fails.
I trust the clouds will decide
what to do with us,
whatever wind in the sails.
That old word, trust,
in its phrasal catch,
I trust, or to change
keys for needles,
a threnody threaded
from holocausted pine,
aspen, and juniper
could be a rule of threes
to deny right up
to the line where
there is no sand.
Bask in this burn,
will you,
the wind threatens.
The streams proceed
their waterclock
without a tock;
all tick, slip, and giggle.
Wait any later and watch
a few billion shrugs
in their native habitat
starve for the wherewithal
to fall.
The quaking preachers bunker-far;
hung up, this cool breeze
so wonderfully made it’s
ominously amended
by the glare of amends
omitted in the announcement
of our little menu. With so little time
to tell caterpillars and mule dear
all that we have written out.
3
The way things turned up, the twos
became a dream from a previous life,
the sort of dream that feels out of reach
even as it happens, or am I alone
in having only one kind of lucid dream,
where I keep pushing on the walls to feel
if they’re canvas or fishnet?
Who wouldn’t want to check
whether this is a VR version
of something charming if chastened
by times like these, which are which?
I itch to find my fingers five in a row,
which is never how I’ve counted,
which is how I know I’m dreaming.
Opposite of Flecks
Flakes so large and light
I wanted a different word:
each patch
of some whole whorl
a manifold I could feel
slow almost
from being liquid;
to atmospheric time,
each falling
in and out
and through itself,
an acrobat without
a mat; without error,
the ground truth
too open to be only
the ash of some cold,
unkeepable fire;
lifted skin
returning to a counter;
and there
some would break
like wet paper
finding former
kin, as in
the if in difference
is nucleus; as if
with enough folds
they could never dry,
there being no side
to call ending up.
I wanted a different word:
each patch
of some whole whorl
a manifold I could feel
slow almost
from being liquid;
to atmospheric time,
each falling
in and out
and through itself,
an acrobat without
a mat; without error,
the ground truth
too open to be only
the ash of some cold,
unkeepable fire;
lifted skin
returning to a counter;
and there
some would break
like wet paper
finding former
kin, as in
the if in difference
is nucleus; as if
with enough folds
they could never dry,
there being no side
to call ending up.
Christopher Phelps is a queer, neurodivergent poet. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he teaches himself and others math and related conundra. He is searching for people who believe poetry can be equally vulnerable and inviolable; welter-weather letters in a fare-thee-well time. His poems have appeared in periodicals including Beloit Poetry Journal, Palette Poetry, Poetry Magazine, The Nation, and Zoeglossia. A chapbook, Tremblem, was semi-privately printed in 2018. More information can be found at www.christopher-phelps.com.