Dennis M. Gaughan

Antares, Rising

1

The sun's disc rests on the horizontal defining a place between day & night. The plain is a heaving yellow tangent of billowing grass & whispering birds. An erect pine bisects the settling sun & plazma streamers erupt from the gash. Red splinters flicker down to yellow grass & sparks lift up into billowing flames.

2

Animals flee the shimmering menace & beat past in red frenzy. Overhead, black clacking flocks of wild hawks beat stiff wings against the still, gagging heat. They hang there like forgotten kites stuck to the red sky. It is only when I reach down, pulling on slender threads of young grass, that I know, as they burn, the final message of flight.

3

The sun splintered & set, coils of black smoke roil up in a broad spiral. Smoky haze wraps the earth in strange grey ribbons while withered dreams conjugate in the darkness. The hot winds whisper of advancing green & part the clouds with shimmering blue air; I grow accustomed to the dark & watch as the first bright star comes out. Black Water Crossing For Beverly Hoskins

Martha rows me from the bleeding horror of a sun squashed flat against the skyline & penetrates the gloom ahead. Martha nurses her madness till I ask How long does feeling linger in the cold? Her breasts flatten against her fists. A hawk plummets from the sky with a splash that sways the boat in the swell of bubbles that rise to the surface like bursting souls. The moon's disc floats mirrored on the water split by snags; Martha warns of things that rage in the cold sunless deep. I touch my face rising from the brackish water to meet me. We fear our boat will sink on the claws. How long do feelings linger in the cold? We huddle close & pray for quick thieving claws to carry us off like raving children to the bursting stars. Geography Lesson The frigid air edges up while cold tears fall from my blindness. It is the blank dark that is terrible: like tracers from the stars that probe the sun, you searched for me. First, I sweep the clutter from reach smoothing out wrinkles in an old map. The furnace clicks on & chases the draft: like sparks from the sun that ignite the sky, you have warmed me. I rotate the map with my thumb & trace the twisted highways binding this shattered planet. I sense you nearby: like fingers from the sky that shape the wind, you have touched me. But this tattered map does not show what there is to know of distance - & time. The breeze is freer for being unseen: like voices from the wind that flicks the trees, you have taught me. The cold weather holds awhile & I fear this bitter year just won't end. The map is torn from use. I will follow & the long spin to a new dawn begins in the blank dark. Life Line

I came up this hill to see my father wrenched from the earth by a backhoe & swung at the end of a rusty chain to a flat-bed truck. Smoky screams bridge the makeshift aisle. He begged mother for a grave just below the right-of-way but (fearing burial alive) didn't want a headstone. Nurses tighten black restraining straps that pin us to our stretchers. The vaulted ceiling spins. One drunk Saturday night his buddies jumped the fence, planted the old buckeye uprooted now for new graves. Twin nurses probe our arms, linking cindered flesh with webs of rubber tubing. I wondered: Would my father erase the chalky cross that stains his forehead? Thick plazma creeps thru constricted passageways, spilling into collapsed cavities. They tighten the balky chain & drive away. I drag the headstone up the slope & heave it across the tracks. Some doctors whisper behind a sudden yellow disc impaled on the far off steel point of narrowing tracks. Two official hands reach down & seal our eyes. I shudder at the flooding dazzle of plazma, waiting thru a long night for fiery wheels to bridge these tracks with sparks, till tongues of marble rend my flesh -- or the chain breaks. The Nighthawk

1 The night sky edges our roof with stars as I pace alone in the dark kitchen. Upstairs, the bed creaks as my good wife sighs under her lover. Strong ribbons of bitter steam coil up from my teacup while I wrestle night sounds & old loss & my wife's new-found rhythms in the dark. Her pulsed breathing heaves across empty space as brightly colored lights from dying stars glitter against my tired eyes. I watch the swirling red maple leaves gouge curved bloody highways in the frigid air. The leaves settle into fierce red piles as blank-eyed hawks circle far above me.

2

A blind hawk plummets from the sky, smashing thru the windowpane, scattering splinters across the kitchen floor. The screeching hawk rides a sudden gust of black wind & flutters above me in my terror. Upstairs, my wife's sharp scream pierces the house as I wrestle the nighthawk to the floor. Talons bared, the bird claws & probes my chest -- its quick piercing jabs peck out my eyes. The hawk stands over me dangling my eyes, then darts outside. The kitchen tilts when I try to stand up; thick bloody tears drip down from my blank sockets & I slip & smash my head against the kitchen floor.

3

Puzzling over directions, my eyes ached & I barely found my way in the sun reflected off a roadside sign. Once there, she stood at her door & wondered: Are you sure your wife knows you're here? Touching in her bedroom she traced over my lines while I studied the wrinkled ceiling, & each of us tried to make out some sense in the tattered maps before us. Later, racing home at night, I ran out of time for an alibi. My wife ached as she talked & tried to figure it out & I lay back, searching for a new way in the contracting patterns of black sleep.

4

My muscles tense, red blood draining, draining, as I stumble into the living room. I wonder as I strip off my clothing what cure there is for my blindness. Talons bared, the stairs creak as, naked now, I penetrate the dark upstairs, ears cocked for heated whispers, bounding into the room I swoop toward her, screeching as she turns from a spent lover, her hot skin burning in the dark with a nuclear fire. I beat stiff wings against the heat & clamor at her body with my claws. She gazes up at me & I explode into splintered tongues of ancient fire. The above works are from Dennis Gaughan's new collection, The Plazma Poems

Dennis Gaughan, Editor of Poetry Cafe, a major online source for contemporary poetry, has been active in the arts since age three. Gaughan has published sporadically over the years in such journals as Bardic Echoes, Kansas Magazine, Nous, and The Mill, with work forthcoming in The Astrophysicist's Tango Partner Speaks, Recursive Angel and others. Among his previous volumes of poetry are the 44/Nightmare Descriptions and Chambers, a complex ensemble piece written & performed for the theater. He currently is at work on a new volume of poetry - The Plazma Poems, with some of them posted online. Dennis has made extensive appearances on broadcasts over the internet, including and Jennifer Ley's #outspokenword channel on IRC. His paintings were exhibited throughout the Midwest until he put all but one of them storage. Dennis Gaughan lives in Fairfax, VA (outside Washington, DC) with two dogs, a library, computers, a woman, and a few regrets. He earns his keep as the head of Sentry Systems, Inc., a small consulting firm (Information Technology).