Stream of Consciousness
By Larina Warnock
When dust settles over the settlement over
the mountain towering between
the lovers no one knew were lovers
and the others no one wanted
to know, a single-lane road will travel
from the canyon to the chasm
to the hell no one believes
in, and they will say that road was paved
with good intentions, and tent cities
will spring up on either side of the road
while someone loads trucks and trucks
and trucks by hand, and they will say
we’ve done all we can,
and we’ll wonder if they’re loading
ventilators, masks,
or body bags,
and we’ll pretend we’ve stopped worrying
about who loves whom and how
until now
becomes a synonym for a history we bled
dry by looking too far behind
and too long ahead,
and we will learn
lies are still lies, secrets still secrets, dead still dead.
The World is a Comfortable Prison
By Larina Warnock
They say the sun sometimes rises
in Oregon, but all I see are cloud
white walls billowing between
me and the Cascades to the east;
or west, snaking their way amidst trees
that smatter the Coastal Range
in green. Sometimes the valley feels
like feather grass tucked between
mountainous seams. They say days like today
sometimes pass through volcanic cracks
of chronology, expand perception in magmic
streams, but my mind settles more like liquid
basalt beneath a sun that refuses to rise.
The scale of the earth is irrelevant—
neither bigger nor smaller than all
the I’s that ever looked at her
and whispered, “Mine.” They say smoke sometimes
settles in crevices designed to hold
oxygen, but drinking industrial plumes
instead and just as easily
transforming themselves into grandiose cells
where a person counts their pennies
and dimes without malice toward chains
painted over their ankles, keeping them
firmly planted in soil they’re certain they own.