Avery Koplin Poems

Brickle-brack barrels are buttering sparrows,
gargling marrows through cinnamon arrows!
Hickory thickory, tickle the trickery,
pockets are docking in raspberry licorice!
...

In the soft hush of morning, apricot spills across the sky,
a tender smear of color, just a breath above the horizon.
The world holds its exhale,
and for a moment, everything is the shade of ripened summer.
...

Take a handful of hydrogen (no, too much, throw some back)
compress it—no, collapse it—
watch it fight, screaming fusion into itself,
until it spits out light, heat, gold, cold, regret.
...

It cracks, it rips, and I—no, not I, something else—
tears through the breath of it, like the stars,
or what was meant to be stars, but they're, not,
they're stretching, filling the gaps with nothing I can name,
...

First—
I wake. The skin shudders, soft, unmoored,
but there's air, air heavy, waiting,
the molecules—do they see me? Do they know?
...

Oh—
the fluid of cognition is neither water nor oil,
but a vapor that lingers in crumbling lungs,
turning the cold air warm, the silent mind loud.
...

I am a mere speck of sand.

One fragment among the blind hum of time,
nothing is bent to fit,
...

Yeehaw! I left, or I didn't, no, I never left.
Was it a step? I felt it, didn't I?
No, no, there was no step, only the air,
the breath of something that wasn't mine.
...