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).