‘Nothinginsomuch’ & ‘Like Chicken Pox or Poison Oak’

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art

Nothinginsomuch

My skin into sleet,

My shivers into sacrilege—

the black ice cuts me 

cross-sectioned, leaves 

the seconds trembling,

paints me with erudite 

wisdom: I sink myself into the 

pavement—I wash it away 

with whiskey.

My emptiness into air,

My breath into transition—

dreams, then Capitol Hill at

dawn, city bus broken down 

on the roundabout—I found 

a t-shirt in the snowbank,

once worn by a mystic 

who got tired, so 

he grew up 

and became hard.

Your star sign 

    into my viewless evening,

My shadow 

    into your paper-mache winter

when we sat lieless, hands

folded into simile like 

paper cups and burnt coffee—

you, the silence of my morning, 

and I, pollyanna-inert,

sharing a last stand between 

tomorrow and 

careless 

innuendo.

Like chicken pox or poison oak.

My birds find the dark 

imposing—it’s not properly 

abstract. You know how it is 

when we feel excessively real—

or entirely present. They sing

strange polygons, into and 

out like pretense 

woven through a plunging sky,

dislocated parallaxis, cold and

somewhat unlike storm gods.

This is how I kill my time in 

our suburb persistent 

cul-de-sac:

I think about how I remember 

you were going to steal a Camaro, 

a convertible, transmogrified green, 

we’d name her something like 

Shameless Reality and 

she’d hold 115mph through Middle America 

'til we hit the Rockies where the

plunging sky becomes dry land.

They say it’s different when you die out west.

But

my birds will never drown, they

only shudder—they become the 

last moment to survive my windowsill

the last moment

into frantic 

dawn,

muted, 

itinerant, 

utterly enthralled by unburdened

second chance.

Justin M. Bushey is a poet who settled in the DC Metro area after enjoying the adventures and misfortunes from one coast to the other.