Arrow

an arrowhead
winding

through
prairie air

to settle
the then wild

flesh of a settler

*

the desert
a hump

full of dreams
sustains

the passage
of a camel

through

*

hand
struggling

to lift
a dream

with a spoon

*

the rain
in the film

was tinted
with black ink

because the camera
lens couldn’t

capture the fall
of pure water

*

it’s not what you say, nor how you say it, but when you say it, and where you are when you say it, who you’re saying it to, and if anyone has said it before, how they said it, and for what purpose you are saying it, and how the perception of that purpose amplifies or undermines expectation set by your previous forays into speech, and how long you are silent afterward, and when you eventually do speak, what you say then, and how you say that next thing, that matters

*

old door the wind has picked the lock of

*

powerless
like a genie

whose lamp has fallen
into the hands

of someone ruthless
enough to free them

on the first wish

*

ricocheting
off a rain-soaked

window pane
a spell crumbles

its sorcerer
into a pile of bones

*

laked
acres

harrowed
by the heavy

shadows
of oblivious

crows

Mark Leidner is the author of Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me (Factory Hollow Press, 2011) and The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover: aphorisms (Sator Press, 2011).