*Featured Image courtesy of Aaron Burden on Unsplash.com*
This week we have James Cole in his first appearance on FC. James combines his unique style with clever and thoughtful word play. We hope to see more of his work in the future!
What would you wonder if wondering was free?
What would you wonder if wondering was free?
Would you wander in widdershins with stark jubilee?
Would you invest in smart rhetoric and declare no designs,
and make certain statements your heart undermines?
If wonder was easy and you could spare its expense
would you wonder like Arp and eschew common sense?
If wonder went on sale with a bright yellow tag
could you wonder like bread in a shelf-stable bag?
If you wondered with warranty and budgeted first
would you save your receipts and get reimbursed?
Would you wonder by shift and schedule your hours
by the places and pardons wondered by higher powers?
Would you ask stupid questions and wonder with rhyme
because to wonder without rhythm is a far greater crime?
Would you hoard all your wonder in cabinets and bins
in bank vaults and boxcars and shit-eating grins?
Would you invest wonder in stock market schemes
and then get into trouble for dealing in dreams?
Would they audit your wonder and put you on trial
for wonder evasion and would your denial
of charges for wonder fraud put you in jail
for selling off wonder that wasn’t marked for resale?
Then sitting in prison, for your wondrous crime
you could wonder in chains on the taxpayer’s dime.
But ignoring all that, with wonders avowed,
what would you wonder if the market allowed?
I can speak for myself, so let it be known
my wonder’s all mine, and for my thoughts alone,
though I also betray it, when I wonder in verse
and worry about wonder and which wonder’s worse.
So learn from my error, my wondering’s spent,
you can wonder at leisure and it won’t cost a cent.
The Sin-Eater
staring long at a screen
so long
that against closed lids
I see
a jam sandwich
of white-purple-white
and I bite into illusion
I am a sinner
I have sinned, eat me
too, it’s not only
the dead that need
forgiveness
On my way out
I’d like
to place an order
with more calories
than a cup of caffeine.
I got dark thoughts
pouring on this brain
matter of mine
like neural affogato
like
could I really make
my fortune in feeding,
so transgressed
the rest like digestif
or semblance of error?
Or do such returns
diminish, some sins
no longer sins
and halfway between
me and Calvary
a sighing like rain?
What is she?
spitting image of a pillowcase
that bottom line burned on retina
that provides underlit emphasis
to any given word in text–
whatever tender rends
its ember against ill
ambience like
tomorrow
I kept
pace,
saved
space for
indents without
index, more lock than
key, or if a ceiling can be
read with lamplight in spite
of stylus then remember, re-
member of fire like hand unliving
The Frogs Desiring a King
The frogs desiring a king
would impale themselves
on a beak if it meant
never having to make
a decision for themselves.
It’s in their nature, after all,
born to water, bound to land,
even their biology won’t
force them to either biome.
The trout call them rebellious fish,
Skinks scoff at their noncommitment.
Even the red newt routs riverward
from their under-log rumspringa
Not votes, nor coin flips,
nor the ragged randoms of wind
could choose for them, and though
none could remember
who called for a king,
it was agreed that the voice
was long, and lurid,
and rather storkish.
Where Elmer Goes When He is Out Roving and Over With
I don’t know what exit he took.
But he took with him: the battery out of my car,
ten feet of rubber tubing, about
a pound’s worth of wailing from somewhere
superior to my spleen. It’s like an old joke.
As far as what he left: mostly ghosts, holy tchotchkes,
outlines of sneakers where dust
couldn’t laminate. All that’s gone and possessed the doll
in the drawing room. I took her with me
to court the other day, sat her on the stand, asked her:
show them on the bailiff where he hurt you.
He belongs to Appalachia now, to divots
and derelicts, darling and din. His shadow is mountain
shadow, where the billboards read:
Jesus Saves!/Pizza Hut, and it’s still an old joke.
Because, like any deceiver he must be loved,
and so he deceived, and succeeded, and I loved him.
And I’m sorry if this is not a proper anger,
and I’m sorry if I seem to grow so shrill,
but there is little I’d give for forgiveness,
less I’d levy for a breath. I’m smoking again, and mercy
most often the method of the unabused.
James Cole is a poet, author, filmmaker, and neuroscientist based out of Morgantown, WV. He earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Virginia, and currently serves as a professor of neuroscience and psychology at West Virginia University. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Carolina Muse, Spillwords Press, and the Artemis Journal, among others. In 2019, he released his first poetry collection, Crow, come home, through VerbalEyze Press and in 2024 he released his second, The Somatoliths with Gnashing Teeth Publishing. Aside from his own writing credits, James is the co-founder and editor of The Rumen Literary Journal.
