MOUNT SAINT HELENS

Walking through a
graveyard of lumber
I imagine that
May morning
when Loowit
the lady of fire
detonated
her nether world
across the valley
of Toutle River
scrubbing ecology
with her Brillo pad
of rage that peeled
the rind of flesh
off hemlock
fir and cedar so
bone became chic
with pyroclastic
psychosis
fashioning
a monument
to ferocity
as she pummeled
wildlife with pumice
and clawed across
hundreds of acres
with her muddy paws
outlining a carcass
of earth maimed
by incendiary
obsession as
she tried to survive
away from home.


About Dane Karnick:
Dane Karnick grew up by the Colorado “Rockies” and lives in Seattle.  His poetry has recently appeared in Subliminal Interiors, Carcinogenic Poetry, Orion Headless and Curbside Quotidian. Visit him at www.danekarnick.com.

TWO POEMS BY DANE KARNICK

Self Defense

 

We wrestle

exclamations

to the ground

referring to

each other like

indirect objects

while leveraging

run-on sentences

with no referee

to prevent

redundancy

from reoccurring

so we reiterate

our fragments

lock up verbs

with no slack

in syllables

so each me

is briefly

not myself

no custody

of character

dazed by

the meaning

of enigma

choke holding

our names

causing deadweight

to experience

a knock out

in rhetoric.

 

 

Legacy

 

Trinity flashes

my cornea with

the inverse of holy

when humanity’s

lost egg hatches

from archive footage

resurrecting

the valley of death

Jornada del Muerto

frothing plutonium

in a seizure of light

with the delirium

of physicists

beheading

critical mass as

their atomic choir

sings an elegy

reprimanding

New Mexico

wrath turns sand

into glass

fusing rage

and innocence

out of the fission

of angst

huffing and puffing

to blow morning

off the face

of Alamogordo

with a roar

of ingenuity

clapping nuclei

in a fierce

round of applause

across the desert

frozen in fire.

 

 

About Dane Karnick:

Dane Karnick grew up by the Colorado “Rockies” and lives in Seattle.  His poetry has recently appeared in Spindrift, Drash, Cirque and is forthcoming in RED OCHRE LiT.  Visit him at www.danekarnick.com.