Mark Kessinger was born in Huntington WV, attended college at Cleveland state, lived in Oklahoma City and now resides in Houston TX.
On the Bleached Tongues of Anvils
nothing gets as brutally plain as a desert.
It is what it is: nature. Undeniable. Life
and not life, without disguise.
Everywhere a billion rocks,
the kind that wait for gulls
to drop clams into broken shells.
Or raptors to open a turtle.
Or a simple stumble
to open a skull.
Innocent anvils, just there,
just waiting for whatever use.
The sun likes to count them:
all there, all there, it says
each hour.
I squeeze them into photos.
An inventory of places.
Next visit might be a park
or a parking lot.
For now, I like them exactly
for what they don’t say.
A casual existence
indifferent to discoverers.
So little
and so much. Too many
to stay visible.
I can feel their gibberish
seeping into my skin;
this is where so many other things
give up.