James A. Hawley
Days of the Red Disk


Having neither fire nor a place to hang
His hat, the one who doesn’t practice

The right religion (“Aporetic mlechchha
Seeks one with similar misgivings”)

Is all in anyway, longing for late
Night ennui or at least an appropriate

Adult beverage to wash down
The snallygastered day in long deep

Draughts of somnolent exegetic paresis.
There.  Better.   Baseball season

Opens soon & it’d be nice to attend
The home opener sans parenthetical vendors

Blocking the aisles, allowing a clear view
Of the ivied junto, the brilliant north side

Sky aproned all the way to the jouvence
Blue lake. A country to the north

Is known as “a collection of huts”
Where stone people stand in the tundra

Point to Polaris & exclaim:
“God talks to me & I visit the sky!”




Wear Thy Dark, Flayed & Narky Remnants Well

           -for Brian


OK, Tlachco. The nether chasm more
Receives us, a dark good hello: hellish:
What would you expect. What more could you wish
Chamferred & chamoised, the stink of camphor
Washing the nares & palate of your
Once monkey-skinned being, flayed remnants worn
By a democracy of the extinct:

Moon-beamed, downtown, pinnigrade twaddle; jinxed
Amphiscians all. We of the rabbit-
Bitten moon –spiteful cohorts, riven shit-
Heads— two fools waylaid in some ghosttown bar
On Avenida Metonomia where
They serve up some spectacular drinks
Such as the Spectral Sankhya Grin, neatened—

To go— with an extra shot of nothingness.
We’ll bark in our risk & rewind, two gnar
Dogs stacked in rife, your cinnamon-stick arms
Wrapt god-like around the amethyst jar
All plumed & coiled (your blackjack hair
& smoking mirror grin) as you raise your
Glass to the aether-well. What’s more, we’ll dress

Ourselves in obsidian cloaks, obtend
Hangdog, dreor, in suits of soot gathered
From the numerous glowering braziers
Lining the streets & boulevards of this —
Our lost, dead, burnt, entombed city. With
Luck, you’ll rise in the east as the morning star;
At worst, a premonition of world’s end.