just six poems by Nathaniel Calhoun

lava

everything spins in the squid ink 

having meant a caress     

swimming now downward with blinded eyes 

once I slowed a loved one’s ascent toward air     

once I tripped another who scraped her knees     

these were breaches     

with a long pole from two decades out 

I might call them cruelties     

and continue shrinking 

from apologies 

that present themselves for inspection as landslides 

resentful of consequence     

held tight through a titan’s eon—      

lava splits earth irrepeatably

each rift is exceptional 

while what issues forth     is not     

the aftermath impacts a bell curve     

peaked with heedlessness

ending in a dreary refusal 

and beginning 

with a not-so-consensual yes

after being at the heart 

        of an earthquake

I ask myself if things are shaking     

and I cannot be sure     a woodpile 

settles lower     spilling into damp grass     

our retaining walls aren’t ready     

cascade failures unroll endlessly    

if you count the echoes     ripples 

in water picked up by wind     implicated 

in urgent violation of permanence     

shake while present     then dim below 

tentative flickers     I ask you 

are things shaking     or were things 

shaking moments ago     and again 

things are not shaking and they weren’t 

shaking moments ago     a flat stone 

sways side to side     sinking     as a river 

inaudibly rises     boundaries that should be 

mason tough     convulse to smithereens     

are we mad at each other     I’m trying 

not to be on guard

be patient 

the water flowing from our spring was contaminated

so we caught what the sky offered   

she was a windblown shallow patch of south pacific sea     

cold layers of tropical blue     

a false berry that rural children know not to eat   

I was a small kauri in full shade     

outliving more ambitious trees

when the drought came or the storms 

but not growing

I swept the sand her feet brought home     

but not if she was looking 

not when she’d feel accused   

barrels full of gore

lighting fires indoors     making sure they breathe    

relighting smoke stale logs     letting ash loose    

we chose a brittle bridge to walk across     a rotting

log astride a rivulet     a deadened drying beetle’s

back   |   music shifts     and the room goes rueful      

wrestling past shackles      keys lost in beach sand    

scorning consolations     soothing recast as stockades    

sullied with kitchen scraps   |   flood waters chomp

fine roads like a cookie   |   a lazy hand’s soft weight

snaps boughs free     pilfered from within     now

we’re rubbing fragments from our eyes   |   I want to      

want to     be someone who     if smashed by a truck      

would be barrels full of gore     drenching storefronts    

maybe a bin of tennis balls     instantly everywhere

undamaged     not just moth dust     odorless and

already gone   |   decades can knock you out     cold    

just slipping by on schedule     that moment you poke

a burning log     and with ceramic sound     it becomes

a uniform profusion     of murderous briquettes

illness and receiving care

bone broth vapor overlays an outdoors 

crisp with oxygen     grease blankets 

settle     bogged with eye ache     banks 

burst by the salty raw     carry clutter 

towards downpour-wounded valves 

an oven opens and cake falls     puddle 

fever or rock fever     false rest of being 

inwardly ridden     one horse collapsing 

after another     none of them rising

the earth below you     downhill of you 

is slipping     the sea is rising     the water 

warm and frothy     bread kept soft 

in thick towels     comes with new candles 

care swaps bandages before they sour

I try to earn my keep     with laughter 

and warnings

ill-prepared yet formidable

hard lives join hands     round randomness     

the secular idol who     owes no explanation     

for smudging smaller lives     out   

a stacked deck     demands too much from us     

spawns a horde     of not just moments but 

overburdened ones     that ruin whole afternoons     

that send us bustling    to the cannery where 

we have attempted     to preserve good things   

things we have sorted     into two categories     

what fell into our lap     and all other things   

compulsion devotion     same coin no chasm    

we set our coin in lacquer     danger side down   

maybe there were bullets     but we never 

caught them     or the guns hung from people 

we could relate to     adversaries swarm closer     

trusting us not to shoot     wagering our frenzy     

our disarray    isn’t sham and won’t coalesce 

into targeted hostile beams

Nathaniel Calhoun works on biodiversity, board governance and systems change. His projects focus mostly on the Amazon basin or Aotearoa New Zealand. His poems have featured or will soon feature in the London Magazine, the Iowa Review, Oxford Poetry, Diagram, Landfall and many others. He sometimes tweets @calhounpoems