Ariel D. Beller

LA REATA


London

Ariel D. Beller was born in Portland, Oregon in 1976
He lives in London

The iron ship moves into strange water


The birds went quiet,
            the air became full of
                                                    ticks and rushes

            all it wanted was to get inside

                        the shadows began to
flutter
                 and panic
            and the core swelled shut

a blue jay guided the moon reflected
            in several kitchen knives
                                                    and this old deep couch
which fits me sideways like a
                 hacked-apart machine       became
temporary

            I put my cigarette out in a
                 pistachio shell, look around –

everything changed

            everything the same.

Portrait la reata editor

Portrait by EMILE MARTYN

Eyeless


I sank back

           down into
the grey bathwater
and gave my hair another coat. I reached
                                                  for the eyes on the shelf
and put them in.
I’d fucked the Imp last night without them.

                     She’d placed her hand gently over my face

           then twisted her index finger

first into the right cavity, then the left.

           I felt the vibration inside her body


                       when they plopped out onto her chest
and rolled onto the bed.

           She grinded her pelvis against mine

                       as I reached intuitively for the eyes
and placed them on the bedside table.

Incompatibility
(a conversation)


           A little blue man wandered into our

                                 living room tripped

           over an extension
                                            chord

and disappeared.

                      To where did he disappear?


He went back to his world.

.....

You have to go to work tomorrow you
should call in sick and open a bottle
of red wine and sit on the couch and scream.

Finishing my dogwood statue


I will sand you down my dogwood statue

           until you fit inside this hole I was born with

I will make you smooth as a light bulb

           and shove you through

Before I admit clarity

           I want to see that you fit where I put you

I want to see you stay

           though cracked or broken

I want to see you stay where I put you

           so that I might pass over

Into sleep

           knowing something is where I left it

Legal Notice       La Reata 2009 - Poetry - Short Fictions - Painting - Photography