Poem of the Week: 7.11.24

"Earth known as stars"

EARTH KNOWN AS STARS

by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira

Backwoods, off-road. July
Saturday, campfire light.
Relucent bluettes crooning uncool tunes
semantic knaves with steamboat envy
wandering, unbarred laughter defining night.

A clearing, morning realization, almost
empty cans, half-zipped sleepers…
Ketol ejecta / Plenty cenote / Hidden
in places shadowed mischievous faces 
shaped by cuttlebone, midnight leapers… 

clearing by the bobcat den
clearing through the tents—scars
kinsmen vacate in bovine dreaming
bunny-prone: How much longer?
a snore asks nth star.

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Snag a ram!

I’m in northwest Arkansas this week, writing to you surrounded by woodland green. I’ve been spending time with friends, celebrating and summering and soaking up (too much) sun. This week, I wrote a poem about going camping and I used a handy anagram machine to incorporate my friends and sights from our weekend as a constraint. Some lines are jumbled phrases, some word pairs are rearranged first names. The result is a dreamwalk of sorts—like shadows dancing by a low campfire. You’re welcome to decode the riddle of dreams, but sometimes they’re better without solving.

Yen slicer, Ricky