Aswim with Happiness
Our ideas leap like fish upstream
to spawn and die in
sunlight
their backs
flecked with blood
their eyes ruinous and open.
Kingdoms
Clouds stream from hilltops
across the valley like
shredded
flags—
my own breath torn
wordless in the same cold wind.
Empty and Full
Trash in the street so
stinkingly much
more
vivid
when I clear the
garbage from my mind.
Undoing
Years I ran my heart counter-
clockwise to find you
to keep time
from taking
me away from you
wound it backwards to now.
John Brehm is the author of Sea of Faith, which won the 2004 Brittingham Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press, and of a chapbook, The Way Water Moves, from Flume Press. He is a freelance writer and lives in Brooklyn, NY.