OXIDANT | ENGINE : Issue 9
Samuel Gilpin
CLOSE YOUR EYES
wet leaves stuck to pavement
honeysuckle and ragwort and wild carrot
the wind violent against metallic chime
dividing lines of sight
where sky meets horizon
Thoreau: nothing in nature makes sense
translation of the slow light
into dusk
blue shadows lingering
even though you cannot
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NUMBNESS
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you know the difference
between abundance
and emergence
fragments growing daily one at a time
impelling sensations
in the openings of space where the mind resists
multi layered stratus
diminishing into perspective
huge and primitive
gray sheeting rain
in migration
your being’s but a light touch
slow the soft decay of absence
Samuel Gilpin is a poet originally from Portland, OR, living in Las Vegas, NV, as a Black Mountain Institute Ph.D. Fellow in Poetry at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A Prism Review Poetry Contest winner, he is currently serving as the Poetry Editor of Witness Magazine and Book Review Editor of Interim. A Cleaveland State University First Book Award finalist, his work has appeared in various journals and magazines, most recently in The Bombay Gin, Omniverse, and Colorado Review.