When Rush Hour Begins
it’s best to drink Topo Chico from a glass
bottle like a predator alone in my car
I know where everyone’s eyes are
on the road I am on the road
with everyone vying to get ahead
When The Morning Flushes To Perfect Fullness
The strangling vine flowers through the tree leaves— its blooms like faces. Dead faces, when strangled, leave nothing divine like a tree that flowers when no flowers unfurl from other trees like it. No branch without flowers, the vine wore many faces while strangling the tree. The tree dropped its leaves. The tree, vined by its strangler, flowered dead faces. The flowers faced out until the flowering ended.
Force
Not from the opening, the dark, but from the body. Like a worm, the arm. To rend a worm is to make two worms. The arm flexed under the body. The body came through the dark— an arm and an arm and an arm. The arms reached through the dark. Like a worm, the arm. The body squirmed to right itself. Lifting an arm, the body came through the dark. Whosoever rends the body is the arm. Whosever flees the body is the worm. The worm dieth not. The dark not from the opening, but from the body. To rend a worm is to make a body. The body crept through the opening like a worm hooked in a mouth. The opening closeth not. The worm crept within the body’s dark. Whosoever flees the arm is the worm. A worm in the mouth rends the body. Like a worm, the mouth. Like a mouth, the body’s opening.
Rivka Clifton is the author of the chapbooks MOT and Agape (from Osmanthus Press). They have work in: Pleiades, Guernica, Cincinnati Review, Salt Hill, Colorado Review, The Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, and other magazines. They are an avid record collector and curator of curiosities.
