4 poems
Reliquary 1
Anything far away
is a lighthouse.
The opera singer
whom people only want
to hear hum
spots one
on the water
off in the distance.
*
It’s actually the locksmith’s roof
peeking above the flood,
but nobody has to know.
*
Later, he walks out to a balcony
—hears a loud crack—
and watches the calico horses
scatter through the trees.
*
Somewhere, on the side of the road,
there are bees in a hawk.
Reliquary 2
Don’t bear anywhere because he may not
flood (hand) peanut & peasant.
Summer wants the weakest shingle.
*
I feel safer.
Walking the white fence.
Gather Gander Garden,
and the mermaids painted on the side wall.
With a mask on not every portrait is deaf.
Reliquary 3
My wedding ring clinks
on the bottle I try to
sip from before opening.
*
A hawk rips the violin
that keeps the meadow.
*
Silver corn sheaf
asleep in a fist.
*
Long ago, me and my mother
had a happy first night
in a new apartment.
Soon after, I inherited
my sister’s bedroom.
*
You can’t draw a beach.
*
Honor
is to never sneeze
Reliquary 4
I painted a white line on the gravel
but the stones walked away.
As I went down the road, the old-timer
approaching the mailbox was whistling.
What a tune! I thought. And
though pierced by birdsong, it followed.
Before long I was at the docks, burning
laundry. But still this whistle followed.
Mice mossed a trumpet. Day came train
bending into the tunnel before connected I
two or three moths singing their small
hearts for the wet dusk and lights
flashing green. Down the road, it’s
all this neon. But down the fence,
the same green whistle.
By now, we have laughed at either side
of the volcano. We touched the spot on
the owl where moon might have an ear.
I painted a white line across a whale
but didn’t know a single man at sea.
Derek Thomas Dew has taught Freestyle workshops in the California public schools, and his music and poetry is featured on the Oregon coast radio program Powerful Poetry through KCIW. It is available on Sound Cloud as well as Band Camp. His literary work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including Dead and Undead Poems: Zombies, Ghosts, Vampires and Devils (Everyman Press/Knopf, 2014), Noble Dissent, Not a Drop, Elementary My Dear Watson, and The Bees’ Breakfast (all from Beautiful Dragons Press). His poetry has appeared in journals, including Interim, Twyckenham Notes, The Maynard, The Curator, Two Hawks Quarterly, and Hawaii Pacific Review. His manuscripts Almond Psalm and Riddle Field were semi-finalists in American competitions for the Word Works Washington Prize, the Elixir Press Antivenom Award, and the Brittingham Prize. He is a winner of an Oregon Opportunity Grant and an Omnidawn Publishing Workshop Scholarship. His readings include international events at The Poets’ House in Donegal, Ireland and at the Lancaster Poetry Festival in Lancaster, England. His work has been translated into Chinese and has been published in several Asian periodicals. He is working on three poetry manuscripts: Maple’s Labor, a book of poems about the physical phenomena of skateboarding, RIDDLE FIELD, and Roman Candle Brake Light. He currently lives in Oregon, where he is studying at the University of Oregon.