Subnotae, Vol. III

porosity in cooled casting

Field narrows. Frantic footsteps. Penillions regain lost pigments.

See Subnotae, Vol. II

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Lyrical Prompt

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Plush Alushta drifts
  entomb the telescopic husk—
lushootseed etchings in brass

Unblushingly,
  the illustrious lens catches
 luscious midwinter luster,
as slush settles
  over flushboard floors

Paulusheim theology ignores
  lust pools in ocular arcs,
ushering constellations
  through plush curvature,
flush within hidden planetary cluster

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04.03.26

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04.08.26

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04.10.26

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milkglass    moon
   sedimental
washbasin    wastewater

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05.27.26

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06.02.26

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Ekphrasis

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cereal lake drapes

cattails
     thumbing
crumb
     constellation
as
     catbirds
tap
     windows

catatonic
     with possibility
catapulting
     spoon
to
     mouth
catalyzing
     sugar
in
     blood

a
     catechism
in
     quiet
(still
     nowhere
to
     go)
time
     cataleptic
spread
     thin
on
     catafalques
of
     toast

tiny
     catastrophes
orbiting
     stoneware
spinning
     on a world
made
     of nothing

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03.23.26

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oar
  bites
    breaker grain—

fore shadows
   hinge on aftward gasp

a shaded seed
        or treading bead—

spiting 
    seething
         shores

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03.31.26

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Redbed

<<Moenkopi Formation>>
────────────────────── IRON SIGNATURE
 
siltstone | ferric matrix | hematite brushing grain | anoxia recorded 

index of internal strata:

Unit A: autumn 97’
firefinch petals abscise,
cuticles collapse, anthocyanin
    
    weeping on loam,
    a lean oxidized horizon.

Unit B: My sister’s first blood—
iron-rich effusion,
capillary breach,
sheet-stippled cross-bedding,
domestic diagenesis in satin.

──── FAULT CONTACT (low displacement)

Unit C: At the Shetucket:
a silver Mepps spinner
lodged in gill rakers
of a Rainbow
Trout lamellae flared,
oxygen exchange arrested—

    bycatch bowing to river bed,
    fine sand mantling
    a laminar burial.

Unit D: My father’s scorn
uncapped, erosive—
hatless red henna paint
can tipping,
flow overtopping lip,
a spill event coating
Tacoma bed in polymeric 
slurry, incarnadine fury.

────────────────── SURFACE EXPRESSION
Unit E: Each an iron signature,
Fe²⁺ to Fe³⁺, fixed.

I’m the outcrop—
    tilted, tiled,
        an exposed sequence
            of redbeds.

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04.21.26

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Once, a hand pressed here
        a body crossed—

a hinge swiveled
        a latch set

rectangle skeletoned
        into certainty
bound
        to nothing

stochastic boundary
        terminal shift

I think of thresholds—
        how they belong
to neither side

A theorem of passage:
        what welcomes us
                erases us

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04.27.26

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Sea-Section

Saint Anthony, having failed
to mute the group chat of Florence,
went down unto the quays

where the kraken,
  the kelpie,
    the cetus

surfaced

like commuter trains
delayed by sun kinks.

And lo, he cried:

  O Leviathans, thou swollen eels
  with barnacled whiskers,
  why dost thou consume the plastic                                
  rings of lukewarm White Claw? 

But the creatures only blinked
their sacral cataract eyes

till a swordfish ascended,
grim as a tax collector:

  Good father,
  our seas run now with vape pens
  and the saline tears of unpaid        
  interns.

A whale breached beside him

like a cathedral
collapsing in perpetuity

and Anthony, poor barefoot fool,
lifted his hands to Heaven—

which buffered,
  and buffered,
    and buffered

and from the congregation
of squid, lamprey,
and one exhausted shark
bearing the face
of a middle manager,

arose a final question:

  dost thou know
  the password
  to the cathedral Wi-Fi?

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05.18.26

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