Erica Goss

Celyn Brazier

Blue

This morning
a song hits you
like graffiti,
grabs you in its fist,
revives an itch,
like the filmy skin
under an old tattoo
remembers the stylus
loaded with color
hovering.


Arrhythmia

No doctor can explain
the irregular, cavorting pulse
of my son’s heart,
its refusal to beat
like other hearts.
It writes in spikes
of code rolling
across graph paper,
telling us about
the lion and the lamb
that live in his chest.
And so he carries
the mystery of his heart
like a visitor from the future
where people understand
its off-beat rhythm,
a heart ahead of its time.


My Daily Crows

Their peppercorn voices,
their constant need to talk:

how quickly they track my habits,
flying in and out of my thoughts.

Corvus, jackdaws, ravens,
fishers, mathematicians, athletes,

schemers, scavengers. I know
they’re watching me.

They cross the street at my heels.
My food makes them smart.

I change things – they adapt.
Counterstrategy is the game.

I feel their wings in my hair.
They are the future:

the dark energy of my dormant faith,
my black sons and daughters.

Exile Angel

Lord, let me see you,
lend me your eye. 
Give me something

to poke a stick at. 
How I envy
your talent:

every calamity
is a wild gift
and every butterfly

saves the world. My
head’s full of
percussion

and the sound
of tearing paper.
Your laughter breaks

the windows of my house.
Let me cross
the nostalgic waters;

let me warm these wings
at the edge
of your bonfire.


Erica Goss is the Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA. She is the author of Wild Place (Finishing Line Press 2012) and Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets (PushPen Press 2014). Her poems, reviews and articles appear widely, both online and in print. She won the 2011 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Contest and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2010 and 2013. She writes The Third Form, a column about video poetry, for Connotation Press.

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