Dance of the Flyers

I could feel a pulse, I swear it was a pulse, loose grip tethering bodies in the old church while an
organ mulled hymns, psalms stuffed in the backs of       wooden pews, electricity rattling
around white sockets; three holes forming a mouth wide   as mine.

Jesus dripped blood above me, stained glass framed pollution and people on the street with
          papercups
of coins, dogs missing   ears and the domed roofs of green cabs.

The hall expanded,    sidewalk’s warmth once the congregation exits, centavos tossed into
fountains of pooled gravity as men sway in sky.

Ceaseless earth, Chapultepec binded by ceremonies of rain and rapture, arms pounding
          sheepskin
drums well into dusk; the veil cracks and shifts and stars show.

The Wind is Taking Pieces

          The impossibility of better sky
          above this red mound of dirt,
          the housing complex going up
          in the distance and I see
          steel beams grafted
          to their foundations,
          skeleton bones of drywall
          and plastics, collagen roofs
          that will collect rain
          and leaves in autumn.
          The families that move in
          won’t think of this pit
          of dust where I play.

          I pitch a rock into the air,
          lose it in the sun, imagine it
          soaring past stacks of brick
          and yellow digging machines,
          lingering above half-built
          houses and future lawns.
          It will fly forever. It will
          pass new construction along
          the coast.

          The workers depart and stillness
          clings to what remains; cigarette butts,
          brown bags, some shadow.
          My name carved
          permanence into the wet driveway, cement, a date,
          the corner of my thumb.
          Small lanterns give
          shape while I sleep

Beautiful Birthday Cake

          I swore the steps
          were made of marble;
          bits of leaves drifting
          sideways down
          the street, claws
          that feel through moss
          and feed upon the lichens.
          The world heaves beneath
          black construction paper.

          Cars pass the torpid cemetery.
          Headlights exhume epitaphs
          from pale slabs of stone.
          Their lights drift
          over me and the earth sways
          with its trees.

          My teeth become the visible
          bones of this body and shapes move
          down the obelisk,
          the back molar discolored
          by feed and smoke.
          The ground is ripe with fangs.

          From my pocket
          I pull a handful of candles
          which I slowly light
          and place into
          a patch of grass,
          tiny holes
          pitted in soil.
          The fires die before
          I bury them.

Lincoln Dunn is a 2015 graduate of the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA, where he received a bachelor’s degree in English. He formerly served as an assistant poetry editor for The Rappahannock Review, and has had poetry published in Whurk Magazine. He is currently in the process of moving to Austin, Texas, where he will continue to write.

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