Karen Neuberg
Cache
The cache of red to green clicked in the air across the hall until time came it became time to reveal reveal oh! everything cracking on high, lost in low the day adjusted taught me to open slowly to shine my pale through night’s shadows through density into the now luring with layers of desire into me and danced danced danced (spicy) dazzle down a hallway blazing someday ever-changing even while sky-drenched hands turn it around.
use the key to continue now turning turning over brimming over
Note: Erasure 1 of my entire chapbook, Myself Taking Stage (Finishing Line Press)
Reverie
Nothing to touch, no matter. The blessing we hope for in memory wanders in a wilderness. Unspoiled by ravage. Free of disappointment. Spending time appearing in unexpected places—transit platforms, lunchtime streets, a theater restroom line. The way light catches someone else’s curve, the note a voice sounds on first leaving the throat to speak. The way our eyes and ears, without our suspecting, are ever seeking to see again someone dearly loved who’s gone.
Couldn't Be More
And I awaken into the seed's dream, into the bud's vision, to become a flower among flowers within a cluster of flowers just as wind lifts my petals off in several directions at once so that I find myself trembling across a southern province of China while tumbling over Mexico in a piñata's flaring contents. My petals are taken between a child’s fingers and smoothed across her cheek then stuck to her nose just briefly, before I return to find I am my own clenched teeth in a mouth pursed in judgment. How to open out of it, and again, when my attempts do not lay content but are a winding road switchbacking up a mountain who's apex is lost in fog. And I use deep breath to shift ajar the door of my line-of-vision's fraction and on entering, I do let go. Even a flower couldn't be more open.