William Doreski’s work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently A Black River, A Dark Fall (2018).
Horizontals
Let’s live in a neutral gray house by the water. Plenty of light, an indigo sea, weedy yellow foreground, and the house hedged by overgrown pasture rose. Horizontals dominate. Even the vertical planes of the house, the slopes of roof, the gables, the two thumbs of chimney crouch behind or between parallel strata.
But the sea—so much breadth and depth looming in the corners of our eyes, even when we look into each other and sigh those long-delayed sighs. One electric pole critiques the horizontals sketching our frontage. Only one, and it has to carry enough power to illuminate the night-distance from Gay’s Head to Cape Hatteras.
As we settle into the house and ourselves we’ll expand like the sea, filling ourselves with sea; and when we sleep after a long day of booming skies we’ll drown into a horizontal dream-world half a planet wide.
Art Deco Coffee
One urn of coffee and one
of Ceylon black iced tea pose
in a fanfare of Art Deco
stainless steel. A bas-relief
rayed with pleated exuberance
endows this service with something
like a dawn of pure revelation.
Against such a ripe background
the urns, coolers, pitchers, stacked
plastic glasses look refreshed
and eager to serve the public
in a style that long ago
the Depression-era embraced.
Renewing the Art Deco world
even in a crummy old diner
alerts the most sluggish mind
to broader and deeper perspectives.
Besides, the coffee is pretty good.
Don’t wait for the waitress.
Pour yourself a cup and simmer
in the gleam of antique metal
that outshines us all our lives.